


Schatten

by un_bisou



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, its a madoka au after all, mature bc of violence, pharmercy and zarmei in first chapter, second update: widowtracer is in there chapter four onwards, theres none in the first chapter tho, this is my first fic so feedback is appreciated, update: there is sex implied (people go to a room after a date) but none depicted, widowtracer will be there but its not there yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-08-12 18:05:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7944103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/un_bisou/pseuds/un_bisou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How big was the witch which caused the first omnic crisis?</p><p>...</p><p>How big will the witch which causes the second be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As If This Was All A Dream

**Author's Note:**

> I only know french of all the languages the characters speak, so, whilst I'll google translate some stuff in later on, that's all there is at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only know French of all the languages the characters speak, so, whilst I'll google translate some stuff into later chapters if and when I need to, that's all there is at the moment.

Satya Vaswani looked up from her letter. It seemed unbelievable – they wanted her, a freelance and much-in-demand architech, to drop everything and come to a previously unheard of location? Ridiculous. Her grip on the letter tightened in anger, the flesh between her nails changing colour as more pressure was applied. The sheer impudence!

What was even more unbelievable to her was that she was seriously considering it. 

Whilst being an architech was hardly an impoverishing occupation – the demand was high in the wake of a sudden, inexplicable increase in natural disasters, not only throughout India, but throughout the world – the amount on the attached debit card was enough for her eyes to widen, and then narrow. Who has the income to give that amount without asking for anything in return? The letter specifically stated that the money was given simply in order to convince her of the letter’s credibility,  
and amounted to “An estimated six months’ worth of architech pay”, to give her time to “Visit and see the conditions of the job for yourself”. 

In general, Satya made it a habit not to trust vague letters with large sums of no-strings-attached money. But, when the money given is greater than what the letter claims to give (Amounting to an approximate twelve months pay, Satya thought), Satya felt one was, in general, obliged to reconsider ones opinions of vague letters with large sums of no-strings-attached money.

The letter’s offer was of a job in a “developing field” with “flexible working hours”, new “skills and abilities” for her resume, and would have immediately been accepted, were it not for three reasons. She mulled them over as she got dressed, and had her breakfast, which was time enough for her to make up her mind: her house was in disarray, and it took her a few minutes to find everything she needed. Pretending the two large piles of dangerously stacked crockery (One dirty, one clean) next to the sink weren’t there, Satya grabbed what she needed, and refocused on the letter, struggling to understand what it wanted from her.

This really wasn’t how she thought today was going to go.

She began by going though the sections which set alarm bells ringing. Firstly, the actual job was never mentioned, simply the perks, which made her raise her eyebrows. Secondly, the job required her moving to an entirely new city, which had only recently been constructed, and which she had never heard of before, causing her eyebrows to reach halfway up her forehead. Finally, the combination of a large sum of money and secrecy added up to a government job, which made her eyebrows drop alongside her shoulders.

Satya hated government jobs. Whenever she was contracted for one, she knew the scope would be too large, the pay only just adequate, and the deadlines tight. Narrowing her eyes at the letter once more, she decided that, despite the significant issues, she was intrigued. Satya knew that not going would leave her wondering what it could have been for the rest of her life, and it wasn’t like money was going to stop her. There was no neighbour, family, friend or pet to hold her back either. She didn’t value her life as she was living it. Sometimes, it almost felt like a dream

Why not throw away what she had?

(She would later come to realise that this was why she was chosen, alongside her high potential for energy release.).

At least she knew what the company was. It had recently become invaluable to her and the other architechs in the country – it predicted, with infallible accuracy, the location and timing of each of the recent earthquakes, weather phenomena and floods striking the country, which an architech profits off of. Satya did sometimes question the morality of it – they benefitted off of poor people who hadn’t any choice but to accept their high fees, alongside the rich people who were demanding and unfairly critical. She justified this to herself by saying that any way to bleed rich people dry is a good one, and Satya couldn’t opt out of a society which ran on money anyway. With the backgrounds of the company in mind, she began writing her response, to find out where she should go.

* * *

The city was larger than Lena Oxton had expected. Whilst definitely not as large as London, it was large enough for her to get lost three times on her way to the building. Whoops. She assumed it would be fine – after you’ve been late as often as Lena Oxton, you stop caring. She thought she had good reason to be laidback – she was still new to this situation, they’d understand, et cetera. She could make her excuses inside. Lena ran into the reception, setting the stack of paper the (Very cross looking, but in a kind of cute way) receptionist was now picking up onto the floor. Slouching slightly and slowing down, she giggled nervously and helped the receptionist pick everything up. The receptionist and her both blew their hair out of their eyes at the same time, and then laughed at each other.

“Hi! Uh, sorry about that. I’m Lena Oxton! I, er, got a letter about some sort of job, and was told to come here and check it out. Do you know where I’m meant to go...?” Lena asked, rushing parts of it, and trailing off at the end. 

The receptionist laughed. “Don’t worry about it! Let me just get you up on my screen, and I’ll tell you where to go.” Her accent sounded French, but Lena didn’t say anything, focused on trying to work out how rich these people were, if they could afford a human receptionist instead of an omnic one, alongside the money attached to the letter. Some quick typing later, the receptionist spoke again. “Okay then. The people who want to meet you live on the twentieth floor. The whole floor is theirs, so the lift opens into their living room, rather than a corridor.”

“Great! Uh, one last thing. Can I ask you for your number-” Lena stopped midsentence, eyes narrowed on the receptionist’s name tag. “Chloe? You’re really cute and all, and, uh,” Lena became very flustered, but Chloe spoke up before she could finish her sentence.

“That’s very flattering, but I’m taken. My girlfriend and I are getting married next year; – she’s hoping to start HRT at the same time, actually.” Chloe, who was wearing a very obvious engagement ring on her right hand now that Lena looked, said. 

Lena, cheeks burning, muttered an apology and shuffled towards the elevator, the receptionist smiling her on her way.

* * *

Amélie Lacroix sat around a table in the kitchen of her mystery employers. Everyone seemed very nice, from the hijab-wearing woman who was brewing a pot of tea, to the teenager who had looked up when she came in the room, but was now staring at her game, eyebrows furrowed, tongue sticking out. The bodybuilder, who was enjoying a protein shake (If such a thing is possible - Amélie wasn’t sure if she was ever going to meet someone who wasn’t French and had actual taste in food), had told her as she came in that they were waiting for one more of their “team”, and there would be two more people who were, like Amélie, being considered for membership. The kettle whistled, and the elderly woman offered to pour Amélie some tea. When Amélie asked if there was any coffee, the elderly woman tutted her disapproval, called over someone who resembled her enough to be her daughter, and asked her to make the coffee for Amélie. When the daughter complained, the blonde woman who had greeted Amélie came over and offered to make it for her, at which point the daughter apologised, kissed the blonde one on the cheek, and got to work.

Amélie realised it not knowing anyone’s name was going to get old, fast. She was on the verge of asking, when a “Ding!” came from the corner of the room. Out came  
a south Asian woman, with a robotic arm, and the blonde woman came over to welcome her – in as clinical a manner as Amélie had ever seen.

“Welcome! Take a seat; do you want anything to drink?” Amélie noted how clean and efficient the greeting was, whilst retaining a personality from the high pitched, unwavering voice. 

“No, although it is very kind of you to offer. My name is Satya Vaswani, and, if I may be so terse, who are all of you?” Satya said

“Amélie Lacroix. The others won’t tell me you their names until someone else arrives, so I hope that you will accept our... Terseness.” Amélie put all she could into the word, and was well rewarded with the sneer she got from Satya.

The pink haired lady had finished her drink and spoke up. “The reason why we are not introducing is the same as why you shouldn’t fight -if we do not start as a team, how do we go on as a team, huh? Do not squabble.”

Amélie and Satya locked eyes, stuck in a staring contest which caused the bodybuilder to frown again. Amélie noticed. She winked at Satya to try to break the tension, and Satya laughed, as she took a seat. 

“That was silly of me. I’ve only just met you – I do apologise.” Satya began. The bodybuilder nodded her approval.

“Je suis désolé aussi. It does take two to tango, as the saying goes.”

“So, what do you work as?” Satya figured that was as safe a topic as any, when you don’t know anything about someone.

“A lawyer. And you?” 

“A freelance architech.”

“I didn’t know those existed. I thought Vishkar bought them all up decades back - in the wake of the omnic crisis, and held their monopoly to this day.”

“This wave of natural disasters is bleeding Vishkar dry, and so they’re letting people go. As well as this, the susceptibility of their hardlight constructs to the natural disasters is putting them under review from the government, and it’s commonly thought that they’re on the verge of death – hence why I jumped ship.”

“It takes guts to do that. I’ve been at the same company for years, because I don’t know where else to go.”

Satya nodded, and seemed uncertain of what to say next, so Amélie stepped in. “But talk of work bores me. What do you do when you’re not at work?”

Satya thought of all the chores she had left undone when she left home. “Not a lot. Chores and TV mostly. I’ve tried a bunch of hobbies, but I never stick to them – they always end up needing more dedication than I want to put in. For example, I tried baking for fun once.”

Amélie raised an eyebrow. “And how did that go?”

“My neighbour asked me if I was burning a body.”

“It smelt that bad?” Amélie was smiling, as she looked over the top of her coffee cup. Steam twirled around her face, adding sheen in the places it condensed. Satya could feel her gay heart beating.

“Worse. They couldn’t work out what else it would be.” Satya was burning with embarrassment, but something of Amélie‘s manner made it okay.

“Don’t worry. I had the same experience when I first baked.”

Satya was smiling a wry smile now. “Oh, really? I hardly thought the French could be bad at baking.” Her cheeks returned to their normal colour as she spoke.

“D’accord, d’accord! You got me there.” Amélie was now finding herself thinking of Satya as cute, and she felt genuine warmth from Satya, as opposed to the tension at the start of the conversation. “Perhaps I could show you how to bake, some time?”

Satya felt herself blushing again, and was saved from having to answer by the elevator.

“Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry!” Out came a girl with large glasses. “I was out to get more milk but then one thing led to another and then, uh, well. Sorry.”

Behind her were three bags of shopping. The hijab wearer laughed, and the girl who drank the protein drink got up and came over to help. She kissed the newcomer on the cheek, who blushed, and thanked her after apologising again as the bodybuilder grabbed all three of the bags in one hand. She flexed with the bags, and posed for (What Amélie supposed was) her girlfriend, who then kissed the cheek of the Russian woman as a thank you.

“Do not worry. You’re one of the best at shopping – and we were out of protein powder anyway. Thank you for buying some, Mei.” 

Amélie stored Mei’s name, as the hijab wearer came over.

“Did you get more tea? We’ll be out tomorrow if you haven’t.”

“Don’t worry Ana! I got you two boxes of both of the kinds you like. And I bought more coffee, Pharah.”

The girl who made Amélie her coffee –which, Amélie had to admit, was some of the best she’d drunk outside of Paris – left the blonde woman watching the kid’s game and came over to grab her coffee from the bodybuilder, tossing the tea to the hijab wearer. Satya realised that, now so much time had passed and all they were talking about was drinks, her throat was parched, and she got up to find herself a glass. Ana shooed her away and found it for her, and Satya was soon enjoying a glass of crystalline water in a blue glass. The aesthetic of it almost made Satya want to take a picture of it, but she decided that it was neither the time nor the place for such a thing. She sighed.

“I realise why you wanted to save the introductions for later, but now that we’ve learnt most of your names, I hardly think there’s any point.” Satya added in her head that, if the person didn’t show up soon, there was hardly any point in waiting any longer.

Amélie nodded her agreement, and the bodybuilder seemed to assent. She stood up – Ana immediately stole her seat, even though there were seven other seats around the square table – and was caught, mouth open, as the elevator opened for the third time.

“Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?”

The latest arrival was short haired, British and seemingly capable of raising Amélie‘s heartbeat just by stepping into the room. Amélie carefully manoeuvred herself so that she was leaning on her hands in such a way that they could cover any blush – just in case.

Satya raised an eyebrow at her.

The bodybuilder spoke up again, interrupting Amélie’s reverie into what married life with the newcomer could be like. “Nothing – we have all waited for you. Everyone, please sit down.”

The one with the clinical manner had to pull – gently – the controller out of the kid’s hands as Pharah switched off the console. The kid had a well worn scowl as she arrived at the table next to Ana, which caused Ana to chuckle. The bodybuilder realised she’d stolen her seat, and moved round to her girlfriend, who was set next to the blonde woman, who was herself to the right of Pharah. The latest arrival took the seat between Amélie and Satya, leaving the one with its back to the full-length windows empty. Lena noted to herself this latest example of their hosts’ seemingly unending wealth.

“Is everyone seated?” the bodybuilder began, before her girlfriend took over.

“Zaaaaaarrrrryyyyyyaaaaaa, you always do this bit. I want a go!” She didn’t wait for Zarya’s answer and plunged right into the introductions. “I’m Mei, and going clockwise, this is Mercy, Pharah, Satya, Lena, Amélie, Ana, D.Va, an empty chair and, finally, the lovely and beautiful and very, very cute Zarya!” 

Mercy smiled at her name, and squeezed Pharah’s hand under the table, who saluted. Amélie guessed that Satya was surprised at being introduced since she had introduced herself earlier, which was why her eyes widened at her name. Lena, too, seemed surprised. She was about to interject when Mei moved onto Amélie, who waved – softly. Neither Ana nor D.Va reacted to their names – Ana was laughing at Pharah’s salute (Which stopped when she noticed Ana), and D.Va was too busy scowling to do anything else. The empty chair made Satya shiver when it was passed over, and Zarya got more flustered the more Mei heaped praise onto her.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt-“

“You’re not interrupting! Go ahead!” Mei interrupted.

“-but are you two married?” 

Lena was pointing at the Zarya and Mei’s hands, which had rings which were identical except for their gem – one an icy blue, the other a scorched blue (Could blue be scorched? Amélie hadn’t thought so before, but it was the only word which described the colour of the ring’s gem).

“Do you two know anything about this? I mean, at least the rest of us were contracted before we began. Do we really have to walk you through everything? You can go play easy mode somewhere else.” D.Va was laughing. Ana too, although she offered no explanation. Mei shot Lena a sympathetic look, as Zarya scowled at the two offenders. 

Lena looked like she was ready to die and that was enough for Amélie to step in.

“None of us know anything about this. You may know more about this, child, but it’s not as though you have half the experience of the real working world as we do.”

“Who are you calling a child? And it’s not like you actually know anything worth my time. L-O-L, I’m going back to my game.” She left the scowling table (Except for a Satya who was cringing at the enunciation of each letter). Mercy got up to chase after her, but Pharah sat her down, and sent a pointed look to Ana, who got up to sort out the mess. She went and sat next to D.Va, who was now waiting for her game to boot up. Amélie wondered if she’d ever see D.Va sans scowl.

“What does she mean? Is there something you are keeping from us?” Amélie ventured. She had shared a look with Satya and Lena a couple of seconds ago, which resulted in the most pointed glance she’d ever seen from Satya, and a sharp kick from Lena.

“Not intentionally! It’s just that, well, it’s not something which is easily explained. We’d rather just show you what’s involved, if that’s okay?” Mei replied.

Amélie and the others shared a look again. Lena kicked Amélie again.

“If that’s what you think is best. Do we need to bring anything?”

“Nope! Ana, can you get D.Va moving? Are we bringing a flask of tea or coffee?”

“We just did a round of drinks, so we will be fine.” Pharah replied.

“Oh! But take with you some of the biscuits D.Va likes.” Mercy added. “I don’t know how else we’ll get her to do anything.”

D.Va, thankfully, didn’t hear Mercy’s comments, as her headphones were still in. Ana had caught her before she started a match, but she still refused to take off her headphones, until Ana whispered something to her. Amélie was too far away to make all of it out by lip-reading, but Satya and herself exchanged concerned glances. Did she say “Hunt”? D.Va’s sudden enthusiasm in response to this was cause for concern as well.

Lena was feeling very left out of the conversation, so she kicked Amélie again, who couldn’t hold in her gasp this time. Amélie decided this was her cue to leave the table, as Zarya kissed Mei on the cheek, whispered her congratulations on running the introductions into her ear, making Mei blush. Zarya then moved to call the lift. Satya decided to follow Amélie, and Lena got up once she noticed she was the last one left of the trio, and followed them over. Mercy and Pharah got a box of biscuits for D.Va, who was in the middle of being calmed down by Ana as she waited impatiently for the lift to arrive. When the lift did arrive, they all clambered in, and, after much shoving and jostling which was made no easier by the two couples who held hands, the lift went down.

“We’re going on a witch hunt!” D.Va exclaimed with zeal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Symmetra and Widowmaker are deliberately out of character, don't worry. You'll get their regular selves later on, so don't worry about that either  
> I'm aiming to post a chapter a week, check my tumblr if it's not up yet, because there will probably be a reason why, such as my mental heath being crap.  
> Finally, how was that for a chapter in terms of length and content? I'm new to posting fic, so feedback is more than appreciated.


	2. Wouldn't That Be Truly Wonderful?

As much as Lena burned with questions, the others would not answer her. Immediately after D.Va’s outburst in the lift, the doors had opened, and everyone took a moment to enjoy fresh air. Lena interrupted the communal trance with a flurry of questions, but there was a concerted effort made to ignore Lena and the others whenever they asked a question. Lena’s eyes rolled, and Amélie huffed, but Satya felt not antipathy towards the others – there was probably a reason why they couldn’t know anything, and she was going to push it if there was.

Satya, instead, tried to strike up a conversation with Mercy and Pharah. She hadn’t spoken much to them earlier (Or Ana and D.Va either, to be fair. However, she felt she’d get nothing out of D.Va, and Ana was busy leading the group). Leaving Amélie and Lena behind her, she strode towards the couple. 

“So, why did you choose your names?”

Mercy looked behind her, causing Pharah to stop midsentence. Her angel had been doing a running commentary of each of the places they walked past, and what she had loved most about the time they’d spent there. Before the others had arrived – before Pharah learnt her mother hadn’t died – this had been their turf, two years after the city began to grow. When their old patch had become overrun with new contracts – all so young, so fresh, so unblemished – Pharah spent several hours on her laptop, searching for a city with enough people for witches to be attracted to it. They didn’t need many and they didn’t need to worry about strength: they had worked well together ever since their first labyrinth. 

Back then, she wasn’t Pharah. She was Phareeha Amari; a girl who told her that was crying more nights than she was sleeping, a girl whose mother had disappeared when she was twelve, a girl who was about to turn twenty and whose life was spiralling, spiralling, spiralling out of her control. 

Mercy noticed the labyrinth open up next to the hospital, and had immediately called in sick – for where could a creature born of chaos do more damage than a hospital? She found Pharah at the heart of the familiar’s labyrinth, about to be devoured. She’d ignored most of the minions on the way in – when your powers let you fly, but not shoot, you pick that one up pretty fast. She had often wondered what the purpose of the staff she had been gifted with was for, but it never made itself apparent in a fight. So, she switched to her gun every time, always lamenting how difficult it was to kill someone with it. 

Pharah was so afraid and Mercy could tell she was in shock. She flew over, pulling out her hand gun, shooting the creature in the centre of the target-like pattern on its face – thankfully, the familiar was weak. She’d seen many of its kind before, always nearby hospitals, but they never posed much of a threat. This was the first time one had dared to spawn a labyrinth in this hospital, her hospital, though – perhaps it was on the verge of becoming the witch it originated from? She’d never seen this witch, but she did have to ask herself why it had such weak familiars. It didn’t really matter, though. She may lack power, but she made up for it with skill, and she was never going to let that witch form from a familiar. Never.

When Pharah was saved, she cried into Mercy’s shoulder for a long, long time. She took her home, gave her the things she remembered wanting when she first went in one of those despair filled places – chocolate, coffee, ice cream – anything Pharah wanted. She couldn’t imagine her fear. It was worse enough to go in knowing what was in store and having the power to kill it. It was another to be taken in, powerless, lonely, about to die. 

Months later, Pharah made her wish. She settled on wishing to save people: she never wanted anyone to feel the way she had, ever again. She wanted to free them, and watch their hearts soar, fly, and break free of the despair they were caught in. Mercy had been so proud when she made her wish, for her wish had been so selfish, and this girl – no, this woman – who had known so little joy in her life was wishing for everyone else’s benefit. 

It took them time to fall in love. It started in little ways. They talked, more and more, after each of their witch hunting sessions. One day, they went to a cafe, and, on a dare of Pharah’s, each ordered the drink they thought the other liked the most. Mercy ordered coffee (“Good for those who are hot-tempered and too fast for their own good!”), and Pharah ordered her green tea (“A drink as health conscious as you are!”), and asked her to close her eyes. Mercy heard squeaking, as if Pharah was writing on a whiteboard, but held true to her word. When she opened her eyes, on her mug was written, in permanent marker, “Will you be my girlfriend?” The marker was still on the table, where Pharah had left it, and Mercy grabbed it and wrote her response on Pharah’s drink.

“A yes, for each of the stars in the sky.”

They still had their mugs to this day – buying them off the shop hadn’t been difficult, as the only hurdle was that the owner took a photo of them with their mugs to add to the decor. Sometimes, when they wanted to be away from the witch hunts and everything else being in a team brought, they went back to their old patch, and went into the cafe.

“Our names? How did you know they were chosen?”

“Because none of you used your surnames – thus, you must be using fake names to hide from something.”

“How do you know we’re hiding from something?” Pharah had stepped gone around, so that Satya was caught between the two of them. “What would we have to hide from?”

Mercy thought of all the times, since she’d made her wish, that she’d found herself in her room, trying to produce a laughter, tears, a smile which felt real and not like it was synthesised from images of everyone else’s. “Yeah! What would we even hide from? Our humanity?”

* * *

D.Va was bored. Sure, witch hunts were fun and all, but witches always took too long to find. Plus, she would inevitably get stopped by someone who wanted her to sign something: even with every possible I-don’t-want-to-talk-to-you sign there is. She saw someone move towards her, and she swore, moving quicker. Speak of the devil! 

That’s what you get for wishing so stupidly: I mean, sure, fame sounds good and all, and having a huge fortune because people literally can’t stop watching your streams, ads and all, is great. But did you really have to wish so broadly? There’s no way to switch off the fame machine once it’s on. Even now, having announced she was taking a break from gaming for “Personal reasons” (Such as joining a group to kill a big ass witch to prevent a second omnic crisis), she was still inundated with fans in the streets, unless she was doing literally everything she could to avoid being seen. She blew a bubble and popped it, covering her lips and nose. Being able to do that was, at least, was something to thank Grandma for.

She met her when she was sixteen. She had just won the world championships and was enjoying the full effect of wishing for fame, and she was going witch hunting – the only thing worth her time other than gaming – to celebrate. She was still new to hunts in general, especially the knack of finding where a witch was. Eventually, she found the labyrinth, and transformed in order to get her mech. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t get a regular weapon like everyone else did, but she wasn’t complaining (Although, later, when issued her M.E.K.A. she’d find herself unable to understand how it was so similar to her mech.). If the trade-off was just a lack of powers outside of it, she couldn’t see the downside – she was still yet to forcibly be ejected. Her boosters made it easy to tear through the labyrinth, filled with candyfloss walls and familiars made of vomit. Gross. 

She reached the centre of the labyrinth, only to find someone else there, and the witch... Unconscious? Who the fuck can knock out a witch? A hooded figure threw a grenade of some kind, and then lined up a shot. In a matter of seconds, the witch had dissipated into nothing, and sent a grief seed rolling towards the hooded figure. She picked it up, and turned to face D.Va.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

Her face was old. 

D.Va knew that shouldn’t be what she focused on, but fuck, she was old. Her hijab was a blue as cornflowers, her face a mess of wrinkles, her eyes gleaming as brightly as the day she was born. She didn’t even wait for the answer.

“Not just witch hunting. You wished for something which was bigger than you thought it was, and now, you don’t know what to do with yourself. You’re on a witch hunt because you’re still coming to terms with how hollow what you achieved feels, and with how hollow being a magical girl is. Am I wrong?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m on a witch hunt because it’s fun. And even if it did feel hollow – which, by the way, it doesn’t – it wouldn’t matter. This was always going to happen – no harm in a shortcut, grandma.”

“Grandma? I’m only 57.” A chuckle escaped Ana’s lips.

“Yeah. Grandma. You’re positively ancient for a magical girl – can you even contract at that age?”

Another chuckle. “No, not normally. Most of the time, the cat goes for people in their teens – kids like you. Some people, though, are just too filled with potential to ignore – such as my daughter. I can feel her contract, alongside everyone else’s. But, to answer your indirect question, I contracted when I was fifteen, just like you.”

D.Va chose to ignore the weird bit about feeling contracts. Maybe this woman had been locked into her thirteen-year-old personality when she made the contract, and was stuck forever in a particularly bad phase? It didn’t matter to her, anyway. “Yeah, well, I wished for fame and fortune and all that shit. What did you go for?”  
“Every one of you is a magical girl, correct? All young girls are looked after by their mother, before they become women. Infer from that what you will.”

The woman – D.Va realised she still didn’t know her name – tossed D.Va the grief seed, and jumped away. D.Va would have followed her, but she bent down to pick up the grief seed as the stranger left, and didn’t see where she went.

The next time they met was a few months on. This time, D.Va was the one to get to the centre of the labyrinth – a sprawling mess of gardens – first. She could sense the arrival of the stranger, and did her best to show off as she destroyed the witch.

“What’d you think of that, Grandma?”

“I thought it very impressive – for a child.”

D.Va looked at the woman more closely. Her gem – a deep red, almost the same colour as blood – was on her left shoulder, and D.Va could see the darkness almost filling it. By contrast, her gem – four pink triangles on her cheeks – were glowing brilliantly. She tossed the elder the grief seed.

“You’re going dark, and this is surplus. Take it.”

The stranger considered the seed, and the offer implied within. This girl was young, yes, and needed guidance, yes, but she who gives the seed, rules the pack. That was always the case.

D.Va sighed. “Just take the goddamn seed. It’s not an offer to join me – it’s me paying my dues. You gave me that candyfloss witch’s one, remember? Or are you going senile?”

“If you keep that attitude up, we’re not going to have a very good alliance.” She said, accepting the seed.

“Grandma, didn’t you hear me? This isn’t an offer of teamwork – I don’t do teams. It’s just that I really hate owing people stuff.”

“If you’re sure that’s all it is: I mean, it’s not like you’d be the one receiving the grumpy teenager who doesn’t know what she’s doing for a partner. You’re getting a veteran. A soldier with experience, and is, by many years, the better fighter. One of the best there is.”

“I’ll beat your ass into the ground, Grandma.” 

Another chuckle – from the back of the throat, slow, like the rumble of a far off storm. “This should be quick, then! And I can get home early to take care of all my other whiny grandchildren. Oh, no, wait. You’re the only one!” She stuck her tongue out, and jumped up to the top of the building. D.Va suited up.

“I hope you’re ready, grandma, because I play to win.”

She flew to where her rival had been, but she wasn’t there. Instead, a grenade arced over to her, but D.Va’s switched on the matrix in time to absorb it. Absorbing the grenade made her light up like a firework, and she felt three shots hit the back of her mech in rapid succession. Did those even have travel time? A hitscan sniper, she guessed. Nice. Or, actually, no. Ow. The shots had barely hurt at first, but as time went on, she could feel the pain building. Some sort of delayed effect?

At any rate, each of the shots left trails behind them. She followed them, closing the gap in the two seconds she had to fly, dodging a few more shots – this time, sans a trail. Perhaps the trail was some kind of trade-off for the instant travel? She wasn’t sure why Kyubey bothered balancing magical girl abilities – it’s not like anyone really cared. They were much stronger than the witches anyway – far too strong for it to be fair. Perhaps the cat predicted these fights would happen, and didn’t want to make anyone OP? Not that it mattered. She’d beaten kids with sets which were game-breakingly strong in games before, and it wasn’t like the decision making skills and reflexes she’d picked up hurt in magical girl battles. She could take this old woman, easy.

The battle drew out. Each time a grenade was thrown; D.Va would absorb it, and then turn around to catch the rapid-fire shots. Each time D.Va followed the trails, her boosters burnt out before she could get there. Once, D.Va saw some dart streak past her, but before she could work out what it was, another shot hit her mech, and she had to react or lose.

D.Va checked her gem in the makeshift mirror of her mech’s windscreen. The lower two were significantly darker than usual, the upper two, only slightly. Since she would have to use a grief seed anyway, she figured she could get away with using the grief seed to full potential.

She pressed a grief seed to her cheek (Which always felt weirder than it should. She couldn’t say she knew for sure what it was that they were made of, but it looked like metal – cold and unmoving. Instead, it was the temperature of her skin, and felt like it was beating. Weird.) and activated her boosters. As the mech flew towards the trails from the latest barrage, D.Va ejected from the mech, as it became a ball of green energy, and threw away the used grief seed, now on the verge of revival. Whoops. She’d deal with that tomorrow.

When Ana told the story to everyone a few weeks after they joined, D.Va winced. Were it not for her opponent’s quick reflexes and thinking, she’d have been obliterated. What could she say? She was young, foolish, truculent – yada yada. 

The truth of it was that D.Va was enjoying the battle far more than she thought had been and that she wanted to show off.

It certainly left an impression on Ana. Only twice beforehand had she seen such a huge amount of energy used in one go, both in a far more serious setting than this. In the last battle to stop the omnic crisis, Ana had used her own massive surge of energy, eating up an entire grief seed by itself. It was used on a teammate who could withstand anything. The magic made her far more powerful than she should have been, and she charged forward – too far and for too long. She ended up facing a witch worse than Walpurgis all by herself. She lasted all of two seconds.

The other time she saw it used was directly before the witch worse than Walpurgis was created. 

The unique part about this magic was that only she, the witch worse than Walpurgis and D.Va had ever been seen to use it, something which marked them as unique among all magical girls. When she asked Kyubey about it, she was met with the reply that only the strongest of all magical girls can use anything on that level.  
This was what made Ana’s resolve to join D.Va solidify. Within a few weeks of annoying her by stealing final blows, D.Va had begrudgingly accepted she was stuck with “Grandma” for all of her hunts.

So, when Overwatch called her to the city rumoured to be protected by her daughter, the sixty year-old took her granddaughter with her.

* * *

“Alright! We’re here!” Ana called from the front, pulling D.Va from her thoughts. The three newcomers were put next to the labyrinth entrance, and Ana opened the labyrinth, pulling them inside. Everyone else followed, one by one, and Mei checked to make sure no one was following them.

Mei watched the trio go through fear, shock, denial and every other emotion that she knew of. It had been like this for her, too, although she envied them for getting the easy way in. She had contracted back in the arctic base, and faced the witch which caused the storm all by herself, as she felt her teammates’ life force drain, their cryostasis failing. She knew she was ignoring them, that she could have saved them, and still she fought, tears falling, freezing as they touched her gun blast which was bitterly cold. Cold, cold, cold. Everything was cold and the bodies was cold and she was cold for letting them die-

Zarya saw Mei’s blank look, how she looked off seeing nothing, and kissed her on the cheek. She whispered platitudes into her ear, as she came back the labyrinth, the newcomers’ shock, herself. 

“You’re okay, Mei. You’re okay, okay, okay. That one was badly timed, eh? You should choose better next time, when you have your uncontrollable meltdown.”  
Mei smiled a weak smile, and let Zarya pull her into a hug, and everything was warm, and Zarya’s body was warm, and she was warm for still living.

She pulled herself together as she walked further into the labyrinth, the landscape shifting from the buildings of the real world to the maze of clothes racks and wine glasses. This witch had expensive taste! They battled their way through, Zarya taking up the front and Mei protecting the others from flankers. Zarya and Mei worked together, as closely as anything Satya had seen. They jumped around each other, Zarya’s beam destroying the creatures Mei had frozen, never resting in one place. A shot streaked from behind to hit Zarya, who called her thanks back as a shot hit Mei. Lena spun round, to see Ana waving. Her shots heal, then? She was considering the practical benefits as Mercy yelled out a “Heads up!” and landed. She focused her beam on Zarya for two seconds, who was beginning to look overwhelmed as she fought off four at once. A grenade tumbled over to where Mei was, and the monsters were disrupted as Mei constructed an icy wall. She blocked off the entrance for new creatures, but also sealed D.Va away. 

"Sorry!"

D.Va fought as many as she could by herself, before boosting back to meet Mercy when the wall collapsed. The beam focused on D.Va for a second, as a blast from above disrupted the monsters grouping up to attack D.Va. Once everyone on the ground was back to full strength, Mercy took to the skies with her lover, her beam changing colour from yellow to blue. Lena saw movement in the corner of her eye, but was relieved when she saw Ana move towards them. Mei sealed off the way behind them, to stop any more monsters, as they went through a door, hidden by a clothes rack. 

They went through, to find a new creature, different from all the other ones Amélie had seen so far. It was a mass of arms, seven coming from each arm hole in the dress it wore, her head replaced by yet more arms. It made a hissing noise somewhere, and began to flick many of its fingers and arms, which shot large explosives towards them. D.Va absorbed them with her matrix, Ana hit the witch with a dart, and Zarya bubbled herself and Mei as they made a charge. Mercy’s beam trained on Zarya as she glided down from above, icicles and rockets alike hitting the creature. Ana was waiting for the witch to dissipate, but instead of disappearing into nothing as it should have; only the dress disappeared.

The arms which made up the witch jumped apart, each one crawling away by itself. Pharah aimed her rockets, but they were avoided, as were Zarya’s beam and grenades. Mei froze one, but by the time she hit it with an icicle, another arrived and she was forced to freeze it instead. D.Va did her best to help Mei, but it still wasn’t enough. Ana and Mercy did their best to support the other’s efforts, yet it was quickly becoming clear to all that they had reached a stalemate.  
Ana tossed a seed to Mei, who nodded. Ana got the beginners to get behind her, as Mei tossed a dome into the centre of the room. The room became cold, and Zarya held Mei’s hand, sensing a return of the thoughts from earlier. She shot an icicle into each of the witch’s arms, as rockets and everything that the others had flew into the arms. Even Mercy pulled out a handgun, which made Lena jump when she heard it fire. Soon enough, the individual piece of the witch disappeared into nothing, and the labyrinth vanished from them. Grief seeds were collected by Ana, and Mei watched Ana and D.Va run through everything the others wanted to know. She felt Zarya’s warm embrace, and smiled, hugging her tightly.

“Thanks for earlier. Something caused me to go over and, well, if you weren’t there...”

“It was nothing! Only what any good girlfriend would do. And I will be the best girlfriend!”

Mei giggled, and kissed Zarya. She thought to herself privately, as the kiss became her entire world:

“If everything could stay like this forever, wouldn’t that be truly wonderful?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler: It won't
> 
> This chapter nearly wasn't on time because of a breakdown I had on Thursday, so, uh, yeah. I'll do my best each week, but mental illness is nothing if not unpredictable. 
> 
> Also, there was a Zarmei scene in here, but it fits better in the next chapter and this one was getting a bit too long for my liking anyway.
> 
> I also added D.Va & Ana in the tags, a friendship with a potential I think is wasted


	3. I’ll Never Be Afraid Of Anything Ever Again

Mei woke up.

It was cold. It was so bitterly cold. Cold invaded every part of her body, from her head to her toes. “Brr-rrr-rrrrr-r.” Her teeth were chattering so much that she couldn’t even shiver. She blinked, and her eyelashes stuck together. She knew she shouldn’t move – she didn’t even want to – but –

“Please! Help me, Mei Ling-Zhou!”

Who said that? No one was around her – worrying in itself, but this level of cold superseded that fear on her list of priorities – she was sure of that. But the voice was relentless, getting more insistent, despite not changing in volume. It was like when you whispered, and then yelled in your head – it didn’t sound any louder, even though it should be. She sighed, her breath going straight past misting and beginning to form snowflakes. Yikes.

She took a few tentative steps out of bed, and found she couldn’t see shit. Everything was snow, and though Mei liked snow, Beaufort-six winds have a funny way of changing that. She fixed her goggles on, and put on the layers that were left there for her over her thermals. Would even this be anywhere near enough to survive a storm like this? She thought not, but she was damned if she left someone to die in it.

Was – was that blood on the snow? Mei picked up speed, as much as she could in a blizzard which was doing its hardest to blow her to the other side of the world. Getting closer, she was relieved to see it was just pink, and not red. She bent down, to feel the pink bits, and was rewarded with a purr which she couldn’t feel in her hands.

“Thank you, Mei, but now isn’t the time! We need to save your base, and all your friends!”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Can’t you feel the snow? This is a natural disaster, and it’s coming your way.”

“But – but we were all in cryostasis, to avoid the storm. Right? But if we were in cryostasis, why was I in my-“

“That isn’t important right now! What you need to do is to wish!  Wish for anything you want, from as small as a slice of cake, to destroying the world’s order! Anything! But, if I were you, I’d wish to live, or else you and your teammates will die.”

“What? I’m... So cold. This doesn’t make sense and I don’t wanna do anything. I’m just going to lie down here until this dream is over.”

“Just say that you want to live. That’s all.”

“I...”

“I want to live.”

Mei blacked out, feeling the snow press into her face as tears of pain froze on her face.

* * *

The contract didn’t take long to set in, but in the time it took, the way back into the base was filled with snow. Mei woke up again, only she was in warm – properly warm, not the clothes that the base provided – clothes, and she had a gun of some sort in her hand. She dropped it in shock, but it only dangled below her, not touching the floor. On her back, the gun linked to some sort of cylinder, filled with a cold liquid. She touched it, with a mitten-clothed hand, and found it only pleasantly cool to the touch, despite her breath turning to frost on the exterior.

She kept still as her body heated back up, and shuffled over to where the thing-which-was-white-and-pink was, as it looked into the wind.

“What... What is this? What am I wearing? What are you?”

“You’re a magical girl! You made a contract with me, Kyubey, and in return for having your wish granted, you fight witches which threaten all of humanity! Like the one which is on its way to the base!”

“But this is just a storm! I’ve looked at the data and everything, and there’s no reason to believe this one has abnormal origins, outside of the fact it’s huge. You don’t make any sense.”

“Believe it or not, your team will die if you don’t destroy it.” The cat – was it a cat? Mei guessed not, but it was as close as anything else was – looked at her. “And since you didn’t wish for the storm to go away, that’s all you can do!”

Its eyes were unblinking as it told her this, still in the voice which changed neither pitch nor volume, just tone. It sounded like an approximation of a voice, which left out all the parts which made it human, but didn’t miss enough to make it non-human. It was both and neither, at the same time.

Mei felt herself despair rise up, as she realised her mistake. Suppressing it, with the same willpower which stopped her from crying when she thought of what they’d done to try to avoid this storm. “Okay, so, what do I do to fight this witch thing you mentioned?”

“Normally, you would have to find the witch’s labyrinth, but you’re in luck! This one is powerful enough that it is moving towards you, still in its labyrinth. You’ll find that you can jump farther, hit harder and run faster than you used to, but that’s just an extra bonus! No need to worry about paying that energy debt off!” Mei felt that, were this a digital conversation and not a semi verbal one, the cat would have made a face something like “;3”.

“It’s in the way you were looking, right? The centre of the storm?”

The cat didn’t say or show its approval, but Mei could feel it anyway. Whatever. She had to save the base!

* * *

Mei found the labyrinth.

Her teammates slept in cryostasis.

The witch moved slightly closer to the base.

Her teammates slept in cryostasis.

Mei jumped into battle with the witch.

Her teammates died in cryostasis.

* * *

Mei woke up. Zarya’s arms were wrapped around her, and she was shivering. Same dream again. Was there a night since that day (It may well have been night: when the sun never sets, it can be difficult to tell) she hadn’t had that dream? Her intuition told her no, but she figured that it was statistically impossible, so it couldn’t be.

Zarya pulled Mei closer into her embrace, and Mei yawned. Even a magical girl needs sleep, but Mei wasn’t sure if she was in a sleeping mood. Mouth dry, she pulled herself from Zarya’s embrace, got up and stumbled into the kitchen. D.Va was asleep on the sofa again. Sighing through a smile, she picked up the controller and took it from her hands and switched off the console after a bit of fiddling. It’s hard to know what you’re doing when you were asleep when all the technology got super fancy! She went over to where they kept the glasses, and switched on the tap. It was leaking again – she should get Zarya to take a look at it, or Pharah to ring up the plumber. She drank the water, and put down the glass. She took a seat at the table, and stared out the big windows into the stars, a sprawling mess of infinity. She could remember staring at the stars with Zarya, finally beginning to feel warm again after waking up from frost.

Not long after Mei was contracted, she came back home. Overwatch, it turned out, had somehow forgotten to stop paying her salary whilst she slept for decades, and so she woke up to find a world in which she was richer than she felt she had any right to be. Compound interest is a scary thing.

She had rung up Overwatch as soon as she could, from the emergency phone in the base. It had taken her a few days to get back inside when the witch was killed, because that was the only thing keeping the snow afloat. It collapsed in a messy heap over the base, and it took her ages to get through. Kyubey repeatedly gave her advice on how to make better use of her abilities, and gave her grief seeds so she didn’t die from overexertion of them, but it was still difficult to get into the building. She had started by digging to each of her teammates stasis pods, but they all read “Critical error” on the main display. She then took a day to grieve them, after she had gone through the rush of hope from seeing them and the fall of despair after finding them dead for everyone, and buried them in the snow. She wasn’t over them by the time it was done, but she was in a good enough space to call and ask for help.

Somehow, whoever drew up the plans at Overwatch had missed their base on the plan when they checked if the area was being monitored, so help arrived within hours of making a call. Then, she was taken back to her home, and given time to grieve the loss of her whole life. When she was done – a good six months later, having visited every place in her old town, seeing every place and how decades had touched it, seeing kids who used to play in the streets as thirty year olds who were juggling mortgages and everything else that comes with being an adult – she called Overwatch. It was the only place left which she felt like she knew. They welcomed her in and sent her on a number of assignments to investigate the recent weather phenomena.

One of those was in Russia. It had snowed in the middle of July, which wasn’t normally that remarkable in such a northern climate. But a full blown blizzard, the strength of which was matched only by the one which had killed her team, was significant. Mei had learnt by now the ins and outs of being a magical girl – how witches spawned form familiars, what a grief seed was, the benefits and losses of killing familiars (Of course, she destroyed them). So the surprise she felt when meeting a copy of a witch she had already killed was minimal, despite her legs wobbling with fear as she recollected that day, but when she saw the woman fighting the witch, she gasped. She was everything Mei had ever wanted. Her hair, her face, the scar running down it, the muscles. Mei felt herself go weak at the knees again as the woman turned towards her and smiled.

“Check out this gun!” the stranger cried, hefting the cannon which was surely over a hundred kilos. Mei felt her knees go weaker as she came over to the woman, steadying herself on a conveniently placed bench. “Or maybe you’d like to check these ones out?” She winked and flexed, and Mei was certain that she would never again meet anyone she would fall for harder than this woman, this goddess.

They hooked up every night Mei was in town. Zarya, on her part, thought that Mei was as cute and as beautiful as Mei found her beautiful and, well, attractive. In many senses of the word. After a meal in a place Zarya recommended, Mei invited her back to her room; although to be fair, Zarya had been on the verge of asking Mei the same question. It turned out they were both staying in the same hotel for the same reason – Mei was here to kill that witch as business, whilst Zarya had killed it to protect her hometown. When Mei got a letter calling her to the city she lived in now, she was delighted to find Zarya explaining the exact same situation to her as they lay in Mei’s hotel bed, staring out the window into the stairs.

“Do you ever wonder how magnificent this all is? Not just the whole thing of being alive in general. I mean, how amazing it is that everything aligned in such a way that we could meet when we did and that we’re here now, enjoying this moment together? I’ll never be afraid of anything ever again – not while you’re by my side.”

Zarya blushed for the first time since Mei saw her, and when Mei had giggled at it, Zarya hit her with a pillow. The cost of having a pillow fight with an Olympic class lifter, it turned out, was expensive. Mei had it easily covered, and Zarya found herself even more helplessly head-over-heels with this mysterious woman she had only just met, who was suddenly the most important thing in her life, seeing her smile amidst a blizzard of feathers.

When Mei stared at the stars now, they reminded her of that night. She smiled, and listened to D.va snore. How times had changed! She was almost melancholic for the past. But if a lifetime of losing things had taught her anything, it was that every moment should be treasured. Even if it dragged you away from your favourite memories, it was only to bring you closer to newer ones, which could be even better than before. At least, that’s what Mei believed! Whether it was true tended to depend on personal circumstances, but since meeting Zarya, Mei had to admit that it was true for her.

She smiled to herself, and with the night air blowing in, the whole experience took on a spiritual element that only four in the morning brought.

* * *

Zarya found Mei passed out on the table the next morning, drooling slightly. Unfortunately, she hadn’t caught her before D.Va did, and Zarya did her best not to laugh as she shook Mei awake, face marker-covered.

“Morning sleepyhead! Take a look in the mirror!”

Mei looked up at the mirror, and even bleary-eyed as she was, D.Va’s handiwork was clear. She sighed, and groggily made for the shower in her and Zarya’s room. Passing by D.Va, who was on her way back from getting changed, Mei was hit with a comment about Zarya not joining her. D.Va was hit with a punch.

Once all cleaned, she went back into the kitchen. She was the last one to arrive, and team sat in their usual configuration, empty seat and all. She sat next to Zarya, and Ana droned on about how they had to kill whatever number of witches today to meet their quota. Zarya and Mei shared a conversation of looks, and D.Va made kissing noises from across the table. Ana didn’t even look at D.Va before punching her arm. Zarya stuck out her tongue, and Mei punched her in turn.

The non-contracted were, to their credit, taking everything rather well. Lena was practically vibrating each time a witch was mentioned, Satya was taking notes and doing her best to appear organised, and Amélie was sipping a cup of coffee as if this were her normal morning. Pharah and Mercy’s own silent conversation wasn’t missed by D.Va, but Grandma was going to kill her and have her for breakfast if she went for them. Ana could tell no one was entirely listening, but this was the par for the mornings. Once everything was covered, they began to make their way out, when-

“Please! Help me, Mei Ling-Zhou!”

Mei shot a look to Zarya, who was as shocked as she was. Everyone seemed the same, except for Ana, who was moving towards the three who hadn’t yet contracted.

“Did you hear it? Did you hear someone asking you for help?”

The uneasy looks Ana got were confirmation enough. Mei could have sworn she almost looked... Defeated. Why else would Overwatch have sent them, if not to help them kill the witch which was coming? The only way to do that would be if they were magical girls themselves, so of course they were being considered for contracts. Besides, becoming a magical girl might have been difficult, but it came with its own good things! There was no need to be upset.

“Only joking! I know all of you, so I showed up here instead!”

They all whirled en masse to the couch, where a cat with pink eyes sat, one eye opened lazily. It yawned and sat up.

“Lena, Satya, Amélie! I want you to make contracts with me and become magical girls!”

* * *

Ana was the first to talk, after the long period of explaining who Kyubey was, and why Kyubey was here. “If they’re going to make a contract, they should go one more than one witch hunt. Not all of them go as well as their first one did, and they should know the full extent of the risk before they do so.”

The cat arched its back. “That’s fine with me! The potential energy in this town is enough to keep me here for two or three months, helping people fulfil their wishes!”

Ana narrowed her eyes, but D.Va pulled on her arm.

“Grandma, there’s snow on the window and Google says that there’s a blizzard in the city. Do you think-“

“It is a witch! It’s one that Mei should know quite well by now.” Eyes swivelled to the cat, which had one back to sleep, but still managed to talk without moving. “After all, wouldn’t this be the third time you fight it?”

Zarya gave Mei’s hand a squeeze as her eyes widened. D.Va dashed over to the door, excitable as ever, and spammed the button for the lift. Pharah, Mercy and Ana clustered round Pharah’s phone, and the potential contractees waited as patiently as they could next to the lift, keeping an eye each on the unwelcome intrusion which was cleaning itself on the couch. The lift arrived, the doors forming a perfect bottleneck. Mei was the last in, and the lift slid down to the reception, dashing past a confused receptionist. Mei transformed as soon as they were out of the building.

“Isn’t that a bit risky? What if someone sees?” Satya ventured, but then her teeth started chattering. She was grateful when Mei pressed a hand to her forehead.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to protect people from the cold! It’s a generally useless power, but it can be useful.” The ground already had a light covering of snow, and windows were frosted up. Mei could see someone watching them in curiosity from a shop window, trying to work out what business someone dressed for exploring the Arctic Circle had in as quiet a city as this. “Come on! This witch can be hard to find, since it moves with the blizzard’s centre.”

As they marched onward, the others began to transform, giving into the cold which was seeping into their bones. A thin layer of snow covered the windows of every building, and then a thick one. Ana, Pharah and Mei talked in low voices, and Satya could only pick out certain words. From what she could tell, they were trying to work out how long they had until the blizzard would kill the city – a frightening concept. Ana was referring to something which was new to Satya – the Kaname principle. Apparently, as the strongest witch gets closer to a location, stronger witches – seemingly emissaries – get closer, challenging the magical girls more and more, forcing them to group up. Apparently, this is what enabled Overwatch to be founded; Ana and the others who destroyed the previous most powerful witch founded the corporation after defeating the witch, and expanded into weather phenomena in order to keep track of the witches. The part of Satya which was responsible for making architecture enjoyable wanted to learn more, but the part of her which was cold was larger and soon made her focus on little else than putting her feet in front of each other.

Upon arrival at the labyrinth, Mei quickly explained that she would have to stay out of the labyrinth with the others for her cold protection magic to work. Lena complained about being left out, but Ana pointed out the strength of this witch was enough to make it necessary to pour all of their resources into stopping it. Having them along could jeopardize everyone else, and Lena didn’t want that, did she?

They passed the time with the others in the labyrinth by watching Mei make patterns out of snow and ice constructs. Eventually, the others left the labyrinth, only marginally worse for wear. Mei gave Zarya a kiss, and they began to walk back, when Mei pointed out there was a conspicuous amount of snow for a city which just had a magical blizzard destroyed. Kyubey scared everyone again by popping up from behind a dumpster, and explained a second version of the witch had appeared, for one of the familiars killed the necessary five people during the blizzard.

“So unless you kill it fast enough-” Lena started  


“The familiars will let it duplicate?” Amélie finished.

The trio looked more frightened than Mei had seen them before, but Ana quickly reassured them. “It doesn’t matter. There are six of us – if Zarya and Mei go with the three of you to destroy the current one, the four of us can destroy any others which turn up. It will be safe – Zarya and Mei are some of the best around!”

“I thought we were keeping us out of the labyrinths?” Satya questioned.

“That was before. Mei’s much more use actually fighting a witch, and Zarya and Mei have some of the better abilities for protection. Between them, nothing will get past!”

Everyone nodded, and Mei sent a weak smile to the others. They headed for the witch’s labyrinth, knocked back by the wind the closer they got, Mei and Zarya picking the others up and making a jump to get into the labyrinth.

* * *

The labyrinth had been more difficult than usual, due to their tag alongs, but Zarya and Mei had fought this witch before. The labyrinth was harder than the witch was simply because of how slippery everything becomes when coated in ice. The real struggle came when Kyubey spoke into their heads again.

“Zarya! Mei! There’s another one, and all the others are occupied. One of you needs to go!”

Zarya shared a glance with Mei, and a conversation of looks made Zarya should go. Mei’s ice wall should save the others if worst come to worse, or at least better than Zarya’s singular bubble. As Zarya left for the safety of a blizzard stricken city, Mei headed into the centre of the labyrinth with the others, and each prayed for the safety of the other.

* * *

“Look out Mei!”

The witch’s arm/icicle combination crashed just to Mei’s left, as she sent her own response into an eye. It roared in pain, the reflections of each icy wall showing a different eye stabbed. Two more, rapid-fire, and the witch was half blinded. Mei sent another two, and the creature roared in pain, as both icicles slammed within inches of Mei. They raised once more, and Mei saw her chance, and –

She missed. But as the creature looked around its limited field of vision, it saw the three humans, who were cheering the magical girl on. It screeched in pain as Mei tried to distract it with icicles to the gut, but it ignored her, locked onto easier prey. Instead, it slammed an icicle into Lena and Satya, or at least it would have, were it not for Mei’s wall. She shooed them back through the door they came in from.

“It’s going to target you now, unless I send you away! Go! You’ll be fine! I’ve got this!”

“But Mei-” Satya started.

“But nothing! Go!”

Lena led the way out of the room, pulling an unwilling Satya along as a wall stopped them from returning. The creature retuned its attention to Mei, as she shot another icicle into its last eye. Success! It should now –

It roared. It screeched. It... It screamed. Could a witch scream? But they’re not human?

These were the last thoughts of Mei, as the screech dislodged an icicle from the roof above her and it hit the icy blue gem in her hand.

The last thoughts of Mei Ling-Zhou weren’t then. They were just before she went into a stasis pod, praying for the safety of her teammates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all downhill from here folks.
> 
> It's also all planned! (I only had up to chapter eight fully planned end of last week). I'm not going to remove the "?" from number of chapters left though, because bits and pieces might slide around, like the Zarmei in this chapter which was originally destined for the last one. However, I'd guesstimate at around twelve, maybe thirteen, chapters if all is written as it currently is planned and all the chapters are the same sort of length.
> 
> Also, ten thousand words! Yay!


	4. What Makes Magic And Miracles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a day late! Explanation at the end of the chapter, but I wanted to apologise before anything else

The snow landed, with a soft “Thwump”. It sounded like settling down at the end of the day, which was what Zarya wanted. She high fived Mercy – the move she pulled back there with her ultimate was the most impressive piece of tactics she’d seen in a while. She knew that not everyone was brought up training for fights and strength (In fact, she was glad they weren’t – how would she pull so many girls otherwise?), but she was more than happy with how her comrades had proved themselves in battle. It was nothing short of incredible, the skill they displayed with their weapons. Still, it wasn’t anything compared to what Mei could do! No one could beat Mei at destroying witches. She’d never even seen Mei struggle with a witch – let alone get beaten!

  
So when a breathless Satya arrived, followed by an Amélie who had stayed back to direct a straggling Lena, shouting incoherently about how Mei had disappeared, it didn’t make sense. Surely Mei could just freeze the witch like she always did? She didn’t understand what was going on. She just ran back with Satya, and they spent hours calling for her.

  
Nothing.

  
Ana sensed what had happened before anything was said. It was the pink-eyed abomination who gave it away. It stared, through alien eyes, right at her. Or, at least, she thought it was staring at her. The eyes never focused, never moved. It was a puppet.

  
Ana swearing led to a Mercy who wrapped her arms round Pharah instinctively. They hugged, as Zarya fled into the distance. D.Va came closer to the duo – sometimes, Grandma’s hug just doesn’t cover it – and she allowed herself to melt into their embrace, and started crying.

  
Lena and Amélie were going into shock, having been with someone who died seconds before, and Ana came over and comforted her. Streets away, Zarya did the same to Satya, as they kept searching.

  
Hours later, everyone apart from those who were searching came home, a wordless agreement made to not leave anyone alone. They sat in the kitchen and talked about everything and nothing, eyes avoiding the four empty seats – for there were two who were dead, and two who were coming to terms with it. Mei’s disappearance hung in the air, heavy and impenetrable. Because she wasn’t dead, right? Right? So if she’s not dead, why talk about it? Those thoughts ran through everyone’s head as they somehow moved onto the economy, which they had never talked about before. The more they spoke about it, the more it felt real.

  
D.Va’s phone was vibrating so fast it jumped in her hands when she picked it up. She‘d made her first post on Twitter in over a year, saying she had lost someone close to her. She almost wished she’d said nothing – her news app had her own grief, raw and real, on the front page. She was trending worldwide. She was so, so famous, and it was so, so fake. Each vibration reminded her of how dishonest she’d been in her life and how warm, and pure, and genuine Mei had been.

  
“Don’t.” Ana said, softly. “You’ve seen this happen before. This is no different, ok?” She was crying as well. “If you tell yourself that enough, it will become true. Say it with me and take deep breaths. This is no different. ”

  
D.Va breathed, slowly and steadily, as she let herself relax in Ana’s arms. “This is no different.” It felt horrible to say, but it was getting easier now.

  
“Come on, darling. Let her go. She may have been one of the best people in the world, but this can always happen.” D.Va nodded, thinking how she would never let it happen to her.

  
Mercy and Pharah were gripping each other’s hands so tightly that Mercy was unsure Pharah could ever let go. She didn’t want her to; she realised, but if she didn’t her arms were sure to go numb. Was there any reason why this could happen to Mei? She and Zarya had been the last of them to arrive, and Mercy wasn’t sure how they had managed without them. Simply seeing them smile at each other at the breakfast table was therapeutic, and the team had only grown closer as Mei made little games whenever witch hunting. Her smile was always enough to brighten anyone’s day, and she was the heart and soul of the group. She didn’t deserve this – to die in a witch’s labyrinth, body never to be found. They couldn’t even hold a proper funeral for her.

  
Zarya and Satya finally returned, Satya carrying the behemoth of a woman that was Zarya. Her eyes were red, and she was doing her best not to look as though she had been crying. Ana rushed over to her, and helped Satya carry her to the table they were all sat at, and Ana listened as Zarya went through everything they’d done. Ana prompted her to go on, as they slowly went into Ana’s room, and to start to talk about Mei as a person and everything they’d done together that had made Mei, Mei.

  
When Pharah came in to check on Ana the next morning, Ana was sat there, with Zarya’s head in her lap. Zarya was asleep, but Ana looked tired: presumably they were up for the whole night. Without a word, Pharah placed a cup of coffee and a protein shake on the bedside table, moving the photos of Ana and her team from yesteryear. None of them had survived either. Was Ana the oldest magical girl there was? Wasn’t that such a lonely existence? Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was more comforting, to not have to care about anyone else.

  
Hours later, Zarya came out of the bedroom. She stared at the same stars she had stared at with Mei, and knew, rather than felt, how different they were without her. She breathed long and slow, and stared into the same stars that Mei had. Maybe if she looked in the right way, she could see what Mei had seen? Maybe there was a trace left of her, in the stars?

  
* * *  
“Why did you do this?”

  
Ana stared into pink eyes that were yet to feel remorse or fear. Yet. Oh, if it was in her power, they’d be feeling that right now.

  
“You know the purpose of magical girls. Entropy needs to be staved off, and the three people you’ve gathered will never turn so long as your team continued as it was. So I took the part that was central to everyone. You should have seen this coming.”

  
“Every time, I think that you can’t be as despicable as you are. Every time, you prove me wrong.” She killed the puppet, but another arrived as she destroyed it.  
“Please, don’t cause more energy waste! There will be a bigger debt if you carry on like this.”

  
“Answer me this then! Why? Why did you take her, and not me? Do you think this team is going to recover? If Zarya isn’t a witch within a week, she’ll be one in two! If you had killed me instead, this would be easier on them! Those three would contract and the team would stay intact.”

  
“Negative. By our calculations, it is most likely Zarya will take a month to turn into a witch, as is true for all of you, under current circumstances. This is because you will destroy Schatten as a group, and the overuse of magic will cause everyone to turn at the same time. This will, presumably, release enough energy to fulfil our quota, although it will destroy the planet in a matter of seconds. Thus, we are taking every step to ensure this outcome.” The creature didn’t blink as it said this, feeding on the remains of its duplicate.

  
“By contrast, if we had killed you instead, it is likely that Pharah, followed by Mercy, would turn. This would cause Mei to have to kill them with the aid of Zarya, and the grief and guilt would destroy her. It is likely that would be enough to send Zarya off as well. D.Va would remain, due to her narcissism, but the other three would never contract. The net result would be far less effective for the collection of energy. Do you have any further queries?”

  
Ana shot the creature, her soul gem darkening in her pocket.

  
* * *

  
Lena Oxton was alive.  
Her heart pounded in her ears, as the previous track faded away and there was a split second before the next one started. She breathed, stretching as her stitch slowly faded away, lactic acid breaking down and oxygen turning to carbon dioxide. Car horns honked as birds squawked, a passerby hummed as the wind whistled, feet fell in unison as rain pattered. Lena was soaking by now, and her fringe was beginning to obscure her view, but she wanted to run. The next track started and she ran, faster and faster until she almost flew at the next turn. People scattered before her as she laughed, footing uncertain enough on the wet pavement to be fun, but not enough to end up on her back. She was away! Away from everyone’s tired, moping faces.

 

She knew she should have felt more upset about Mei’s death but after the initial shock wore off, it was difficult to feel much more than the usual upset about Mei’s death. She was definitely sad – it wasn’t like it was a good thing Mei died! It was just really different to how everyone else was mourning. They all saw Mei as someone who they could rely on, who was smart and confident and always knew what he was doing. So her death must have meant much more to them than it did to her. After trying to see if she could understand their feelings, or even evoke them in herself, she simply settled on trying to stay out of their way. They had to mourn her properly – which was entirely fair. But Lena could only see herself getting in the way of the process, and so she was going running.

  
The crowd in front was a stubborn one. She tried to get them to part by laughing loudly, which got everyone else to move, but they didn’t move – or even react. Almost every other group had reacted in some way, so seeing a large clump sit still as she dropped hints that they needed to move, was more than a bit unusual. Maybe they were just really focused? Yeah, that had to be it. Not like they were ignoring her.

  
Lena slowed her pace to a jog, from the breakneck speed at which she had been going for a while. She breathed the park’s air, and focused on not letting any water droplets land on her. It was impossible, she knew, without the umbrellas everyone in front of her was holding, but it was fun to at least try.

  
At last! A corner. She sped up to try and overtake, but simply got caught in the throng of people with their umbrellas up. Their clothes were all really different, like they’d all just been doing something else and put it down to start working on whatever this was. One was in a Starbucks uniform, a few in office attire. Maybe there was a sudden trend in group lunch break hikes, and she was just slow to catch on? Lena didn’t think so, but it was easier to believe that than believe that this was coincidence, that people of different ages and professions would just decide to walk together on a whim.

  
They kept walking, until they reached the building of a bank, and, in unison, they all turned to the fire escape stairs, climbing as fast as anyone Lena had ever seen. Someone tripped, but they simply trod on her, and she didn’t react. Lena felt fear, and pushed her way out of the crowd, but then two of them grabbed her and forced her up the stairs. She was stuck in the web of bodies, and she couldn’t move away. As she reached the top, she saw one of them, the one who had been leading them, stand on the edge of the building.

  
Lena sensed, rather than saw, what would have happened if she didn’t move when she did. She ran over, and grabbed the man and pulled him away. But as soon as she did, another took his place, and then more did. She was running as fast as she could between them, trying to stop them, but she just couldn’t keep up. She pulled one closer than she had the others, and saw a mark on his neck, red as blood. She remembered D.Va talking about these – they were a “Witch’s Kiss”, how they marked their prey.

  
She scanned the rooftop as another one tried to hurl herself off the edge, and, sure enough, there was a tell-tale glow emanating from a circle which opened into the void. She gasped, as she looked right into the labyrinth and two of the marked pushed her straight in.

  
* * *

  
The labyrinth was cold. Not as cold as when the city had been covered in snow, but she still felt colder than usual. She looked around, into a maze of mirrors, and stumbled around, bumping into glass that wasn’t there two seconds ago.

  
A cackle emanated from her left, and Lena span round instantly. A path seemed to have opened in front of her, so she began to run again. Her hair was a mess, and there were sweat stains on her running gear, but there was no point in stopping now. She kept running, seeing another path and following it until she bumped straight into a familiar. It kept cackling, through static – it was a radio with legs, and the laughter echoed eerily from the tinny radio. Her instinct was to run away, but a mirror closed her off and she was trapped in a room as the thing cackled, louder and louder. She hit it, but nothing changed. She screamed, but it didn’t react. She began to cry, and still the laughter played, looping round and round, until she was seeing things in the mirror.

  
She was seeing Mei, and her life. She saw her laughing with Zarya, lying in bed with Zarya, staring at the stars with Zarya.

  
“No! Stop it!”

  
The laughter didn’t stop. Mei kept iterating around her, and she was seeing Mei’s smile a thousand different ways in a thousand different mirrors. She punched one of the mirrors, and she felt blood on her hands. The mirror was stained red with blood and Mei’s smile was disjointed, but she kept smiling.

  
“Please! Make it go away!”

  
She saw Mei smile at her, and then she saw herself smiling back. The mirrors were now playing what happened after she left, and she saw Mei battle with the monster, and then saw her smile break, seconds away from death.

  
“I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see this!”

  
Lena felt tears on her face, and the radio was now whispering to her something else.

  
“What if you had stayed?”

  
“No no no no no no no no no no no no no n-”

  
“Personne n’échappe à mon regard.”

  
Tears began to dry on Lena’s face as a shot whipped down, and destroyed the radio that had been whispering to her. She looked up, in shock, and saw Amélie focusing down the barrel of a rifle. More shots flew down, and the mirrors around her smashed. A line of pure light attached itself to the wall next to Lena, and Amélie rappelled down.

  
“Ma chérie! It would appear you have yourself in a spot of trouble. It’s a good thing I’m here to help, non?”

  
“The people outside, they were-”

  
“D.Va caught them all. Now, if you’ll give me a moment.”

  
Amélie flew sway again, and crouched on the top of a mirror. Three shots and a roar, and the labyrinth was dissolving around Lena, like a bad dream. Amélie flew down to Lena, and they kissed, eyes shut. Lena inhaled everything that was Amélie, and in that moment, she was sure that this was what makes magic and miracles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one is a bit later than usual because I just started a project at school worth 25% of my final physics grade. Obviously, that takes precedence over this, and I've been spending around 45 mins a night on that - time which normally goes to this. That's also why this one is shorter than usual, but this chapter was never really going to be much longer than this - maybe a section on Amélie contracting, but that's all there would have been more.
> 
> On the positive side of things, at least I've finally worked Widowtracer in! Yay!
> 
> Also, I realise it says this basically everywhere in this fic, but general feedback (E.G: "This bit was well written!", or "There's a typo you missed here!" or even "I didn't like this bit all that much!".) would be really nice to have. I'm very surprised I have as many kudos as I have, and I can't thank you enough for them, but it's just really nice to hear which bits work and which don't, so I can write better than next time. You don't even need a reason for what you're saying! I just wanna know which bits are good and which... Aren't so good.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. There's No Way You Don't Regret It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a few hours later than usual, so I'm doing better than last week.

"Wait. This isn’t right.”

Lena pulled herself back from Amélie’s – was she Amélie anymore? – embrace. The scent of a perfume lingered in the air – it smelled like a dream, just out of your reach as you wake up. Was it hers or Amélie’s? Or maybe, just maybe, it was made of the fusion of all they were. Amélie’s high class fashion, biting wit, and now her inhuman essence, combining with the myriad of moments that was Lena, from her constant rush to get to where she should have already been, to her boundless energy and enthusiasm, to her unwillingness to let herself come before anyone else. 

Sometimes, mixtures are good. Like the fusion of milk, butter and eggs that went into a cake, baked at the right temperature for the right amount of time. If the weather is right, it is eaten outside, and there are a myriad of smiles. 

But sometimes mixtures are bad. Sometimes, you miss the moment, and suddenly everything is ruined; the ingredients are a day past their expiration date, the oven was too high, the cake left too long. The weather is not right, and it is raining and everyone’s mood could not even be fixed by the perfect cake, let alone the monstrosity you have created. 

“What do you mean, ma chérie? Surely nothing has changed? Or maybe all has changed, and it is too much for you? If so, just say the word. We can go – oh, how do you say? Ce n'est pas plus lent, err – slower if you wish. I just want you to be comfortable.”

There was a yellow tint to her eyes, and her hair was in a ponytail that Lena had never seen before. Amélie’s hair was long, and flowed freely and gracefully down her back. Her skin was colder to the touch than Lena remembered, and she wasn’t fully there. She felt a loss of something, in her voice, her gaze, her aura. Lena took a glance at her gem, no fewer than six orbs, set into a helmet of some kind. It was frightening to see someone who was so familiar, and yet, so alien. It was like looking at your reflection, through a grimy and warped mirror, which gave you only a menagerie of all your composite parts without the complete entity. 

“It’s not that, Amélie. It’s that you’re simultaneously the same person you were before this, and yet, you’re not. Believe me, I love you with all my heart and what I felt kissing you was like nothing else. None of my other girlfriends-”

“-Ooh! Girlfriends now, are we? - ”

“-gave me the same experience. But you... You’re something electric. And the buzz I get from that is so great that I don’t know what to do, other than want to kiss you again, and again, and again.”

“Then do so! The others can spare us for a few hours, surely? Or perhaps a few days is what the mademoiselle has in mind, huh?”

“Look, I just want you to talk through everything with the others? They got years of experience, right? Something they know must come in handy.”

“You sound like you’re talking to some kind of rookie. Chérie, I’m sorry to have lied to you all, but I’m not like you and Satya. I knew about everything before we came together.”

* * *

No one wanted to speak. 

Instead they sat, in a silence icier than the barrel of Mei’s gun, broken only by occasional contempt. When D.Va had realised that Amélie wasn’t a new contract, that she could have saved Mei, a mass text went faster than lightning. The resulting gathering was made of stares, whispered comments, and barely veiled attempts to find a reason to oust Amélie.

The object of everyone’s dissention sat opposite to Ana, who eyed her differently now. Her so-called wedding ring, a red gem set in a band of gold, glinted loudly in the room. Ana had been reserved so far, as everyone prodded and poked her to see what had happened, but she could feel the disapproval emanating from her.  
She could feel the same emotions from everyone. It was in the air of the room, the ambience turned from familiar and comforting to foreign and hostile. Lena dodged Amélie’s gaze as well as she dodged responsibilities. She, too, eyed her differently, but it was a kinder difference than the others’. They viewed her with distrust, and hurt, but she only viewed her with fear, which was almost an improvement.

Almost.

Pharah and Mercy viewed her differently. This difference was made of ice, and frost bridged the gap between them. Not literally, of course, but she could feel the steely glares and hear the whispered comments, followed by tittering laughter. Amélie felt tension curl up in her fingers each time the laughter echoed behind her. She would have glared at them, or sent them a sharply worded assault which would slice anyone else apart, but she told herself she didn’t have the energy. That they weren’t worth it. That she didn’t envy them.

Satya used her own brand of contempt - a fiery one, unrivalled by the other icy ones in the room, and avoided speaking for the most part. But she, too, was in place around the table, part of the collective of hatred which was threatening to freeze Amélie as if Mei herself were in the room and not the iteration of herself left behind in what everyone else saw of her.

Zarya saw her in a worse light than anyone else. She glared at her with cold fury, clenching the same flavour of protein drink as she had on the first day they met. Amélie responded only with the same, whenever she had to speak to her, but for the most part the hatred was one sided.

“So, Amélie, don’t leave us in suspense! Tell us what you wished for.” Ana looked across the table, the glint in her eye mirroring that of a sword.

* * *

Gérard Lacroix had not been a bad man. He had a good job, a good house, a stunning wife who he loved more than anyone else in the world. God, she was beautiful! He found himself smiling to himself, as he got up, off of the train he caught to work. The station was packed, as always, but he strode confidently. He was going to get to work, and he was going to do his job well, as he always did.

A buzz from his left pocket. Was it her again? Probably just that he’d left something not one. He smiled to the receptionist – almost as pretty as Amélie, she fluttered her eyelashes when he flirted with her – and scanned his card to get through the glass gates. He scanned his phone as he walked into the firm, congratulated by every person he walked past. A junior partner! He was making his way up in the firm! Maybe, if everything kept ticking as it was, he could have his name written in silver one day. That was the dream, anyway.

His phone went again, and Lacroix ignored it. He’d gone pretty heavily on the drink last night, so she had to understand that he hadn’t meant what he said. And it wasn’t like he said what he did out of nowhere. She was always getting in his way, ruining his bi chances with demands to know about when he was going to spend time with her, or how she was meant to ever have a life outside of the house if he refused to help out. Yawn. He was the breadwinner; she was the stay at home wife who was there to help. She was a supporting character in his success story. 

And it wasn’t like he didn’t appreciate what she did. It was just that she never got everything exactly like he wanted, so he couldn’t exactly congratulate her for that. Women, right? If you give them what they want for a bad job, they’ll just get fat and lazy. And he didn’t want a fat wife, ugly and useless. If she ever got fat, he’d divorce her, off the bat. No, his wife was there to be thin young, happy and always there to help him out. So what if he finished several hours before she did? She was just being lazy.

And now there was all this talk of wanting to do “Something” with the law degree she had. How come she wanted to stop doing the household work when she already didn’t do enough? All these stupid ideas she had, about getting her own job in the firm, about “Making a life outside of you, Gérard”, about no longer staying at home.

Honestly, she should be glad she was still hot. If she wasn’t, he’d divorce her.

* * *

“Amélie Lacroix, I want you to make a contract with me and become a magical girl!”

She looked up, at the white cat which reminded her so much of the albino she’d owned as a child. She had no reason to believe it, but with the tears drying on her face, she’d believe anything she could, if it meant there was a chance – just a chance! – of making Gérard pay for what he’d done to her. She’d, she’d sell her house, her car, take out a mortgage – hell, she’d even sell her soul.  
“Can... Can I use the wish to make someone else upset? Can I make someone pay for what they’ve done to me? Can I hurt someone?”  
“It’s unorthodox, but yes, you can. Generally, we make wishes like those less powerful, simply because they’d lead to a high rate of phenomena worldwide, which would lead to you all becoming more and more visible worldwide. However, your level of potential is so high that we’re willing to overlook that, just this once. So, Amélie Lacroix, what is your wish?”  
She breathed, in and out, taking a moment to steady herself.  
“I want to make Gérard Lacroix pay. I want to take everything from him that he has taken from me – my money, my career, my life.”  
“Then the contract is sealed.”  
* * *  
Amélie rose from where she lay on the floor, the creature with eyes which were closer to pink than crimson by only a narrow margin waiting for her to rise.

“Normally, this is when I’d go through the mechanics of being a magical girl. However, your wish has involved slight memory alterations, so we’ve taken the liberty of planting the instructions in your head for you. Now, there were three things outlined in your wish, so we’ve addressed each one separately. With regards to money, the money inside of Gérard’s bank account has been transferred into yours – quite a large amount, I should say, to the tune of a six-figure amount of Euros. The most discreet way of sorting out your career is that you have now had a similar career path to Gérard’s, although different choices were made where you’d make different choices, such as in cases where Gérard chose to hurt, rather than heal, because it was more profitable. In other words, you are now a junior partner at a prominent law firm. Congratulations!”

A pause hung pregnant in the air, as Amélie worked out exactly what it was that she had said.

“Ah, yes. That. We weren’t sure how literal we wanted to go with that one so we’ve made it that in one hour, Gérard Lacroix will die painlessly of a heart attack, unless you choose to use your new abilities to kill him yourself. Be advised that neither will change the already decided outcome, which is that Gérard Lacroix was run over by a car when he was much younger. We are, personally, uncaring for either outcome, but we do stress that you must make a decision soon.”  
Amélie looked at her gun, suddenly heavy in her hands, and felt as if her decision had been made for her.

“To finish up, you know have two sets of memories for your life post university until now. We haven’t deleted any memories, but instead you have two lives – one wherein Gérard is run over, the day after you meet him, and one wherein everything progresses as we have changed it to be so. We hope this is acceptable to you! And, just so we can be certain, would you rather we changed your name back to your maiden one, or would you rather you kept Lacroix?”

“Lacroix. After all, what else will this widow have to remember her husband otherwise?” A slow chuckle escaped Amélie’s throat, as the widow-maker left the room.

* * *

“I never took you for one who has such distasteful decor. It’s a good thing I decorated our home, Gérard.”

Amélie lined up the shot slowly, sat on a balcony overlooking the large windows in her office. A gentle click told her the shot was fully charged up, and she pulled the trigger.

“I think we should see other people.”

* * *

“I killed my husband and took everything from him. That was my wish.”

Widowmaker watched the group’s reactions carefully. There was the child, who seemed more impressed than shocked. Typical. You show a child death, and it gets more excited at seeing something it didn’t know could happen than the art involved. Or maybe she was genuinely impressed? It didn’t matter. She didn’t care.

Satya was simply shocked, and had to steady herself. Pharah and Mercy also took a moment, sharing a look which surely conveyed more than words. Couples. C’est comme ça, avec leur. Zarya was disgusted, but Widowmaker felt more inclined to kill her than reply to her. A waste of her time, that’s all she was.

Lena and Ana were the most interesting of them all. Ana because she hardly looked surprised, as if she knew exactly what was going on before it even happened. Did... Did she know already? Was that why she asked? Perhaps she’d have to play more carefully around this woman. Lena, however, had jumped straight into her defence. Of course she did! After all, she knew what really happened. Widowmaker only said it the way she did because it carried more effect.

“Guys, she’s just trying to scare you all. Yes, she killed her husband, but it was because of how she’d worded her wish wrong. There’s no way you don’t regret it, right?”

“Not that I’d undo it if I could.”

“Don’t say that, luv! You haven’t told me what Gérard was like. You must have liked him a lot, to marry him like that.”

“Non. He used my lack of financial protection to coerce me, and didn’t stop for the entirety of our marriage. It’s true, I didn’t intend to kill him with my words, but it’s not like I regret it. He was a horrible man, who abused me. I won’t go into the details – something as pretty as yourself doesn’t deserve to hear ugly things like that. But I will tell you this; he made me hide myself and my love for women because he thought I was too beautiful to let go. If that doesn't give you all reason to hate hi, nothing will."

The couple finished exchanging their looks. “What about the letter? We handpicked you from people who weren’t yet contracted, and Ana knows when someone contracts. It doesn’t make sense.” Mercy queried.

It was Ana’s turn now. “You’re right, it doesn’t. However, the pink eyed abomination itself came to speak to me earlier today, and explained what happened. It hid her contract from me, and was using it as an attempt to spread disorder amongst the group.” Ana bit her lip, working out how to avoid telling the group the one thing they couldn’t know. “Apparently, it simply wasn’t sure what intentions Amélie had, and wanted to let her explain what had happened to her, just in case she wanted to lie about her contract.”

Mercy eyed Ana suspiciously, trying to work out where the mistake in what she said lied, but figured that the longer she spent, the less she’d understand – as was always the case whenever Ana had something to hide.

“I like to call myself Widowmaker, if that’s acceptable to everyone else. And if that’s all, I’ll take my leave for the evening. I wish you all pleasant dreams.”

* * *

Lena rushed into Widowmaker’s room the following morning, and was disappointed to find her not there. She went to talk to Ana about it, but she, too, was absent. She ambled into the kitchen, trying to get some cereal off of a shelf which was too high, but Satya came in and got it for her.

“Thanks luv!” Lena said, through a mouth filled with cornflakes. “Say, have you seen Amé – I mean Widowmaker – at all today? Or Ana?”

Satya shook her head, as she began to cook herself pancakes, after spending a lot of time trying to find the only frying pan that had been washed up. She wondered how everyone who lived had managed to do so before Mercy did, since she’d only ever seen her do any housework, with a bizarre efficiency which made her outpace the others. She’d seen Pharah try to help once, and she’d been scolded several times for placing everything in the wrong place. Oh dear.

“If you wanna know where Ana is, get Satya to give me a pancake.” Came a voice form the couch, which was busy playing whichever game she was invested in this week.

Lena pleaded with Satya, and when that failed, stole one herself, and gave it to the petulant one.

“Try the roof.”

Lena blurted out her thanks, before dashing to the lift. Maybe Widowmaker was there as well?

* * *

Shots streaked past Lena as soon as she opened the lift doors. Cracks came from both sides of her, as she watching Widowmaker and Ana, locked in some kind of sniper duel, which didn’t seem to be stopping, despite her arrival. So, instead, she sat down, next to the suddenly arrived Kyubey, who was yawning slightly.

“You know, Lena, if you want to stop this fighting that’s going to happen in the team because of Widowmaker, you could simply wish to undo her contract.”

Ana looked up from her scope on hearing the Devil’s voice nearby again, and let her guard down momentarily as she shot a sleep dart towards where she saw Lena. That wasn’t happening today – not on her watch.

Widowmaker, likewise, saw what happened, but instead used this time to send a shot straight into Ana’s eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was nearly called [S] Amélie: Make Him Pay
> 
> Also yay character development! It was fun to play with a wish which wasn't at all close to PMMM canon wishes, but I felt it fit Widowmaker better than what I originally had planned. I'm now very glad she didn't contract last chapter, because then I wouldn't have done something as fun as that was to write. 
> 
> Finally, I'm not going to go into any more detail about Widow's past than that, but I'd like to say that (Whilst I probably didn't write it well enough to give it justice) she is, for the purpose of this fic, abused. That one is not going to be debatable.


	6. This Just Has To Be Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the week-long break! I went to Berlin last weekend on a school trip, and it was amazing! Sadly, that also meant I couldn't update.
> 
> The good news is that the physics project is done now, so we should be back to normal uploading soon.

Ana saw, rather than felt, the shot go into her eye. Instead of simply coming into the now useless jelly, it hit her scope, shattering into a million pieces as the last image she would ever see through that lens.

Not that it mattered.

After you contract, your body is simply a shell. Even the extreme physical trauma that her loss of vision provided felt like nothing. And, besides, her magic could always fix anything which went severely wrong.

The important thing was that Lena was safe. She had collapsed on the floor, one moment animated, the next her lips frozen into the first syllable of "I wish". The puppet of a higher order, supposedly caring only for the preservation of the universe, watched as Ana's shots streaked past wildly, missing without the scope to guide them and her non-dominant eye forced to take on roles it wasn't meant to. 

Widowmaker rappelled from ledge to ledge, firing at Ana but always just missing. Or actually, not missing – toying. The elder woman grimaced as she turned again, blood streaking down her face and dripping onto her weapon. The door to the roof burst open – Ana must have screamed, telling the others what was going on – and D.Va jumped into a mech. Satya gasped at the scene unfolding in front of her, as D.Va chased the woman who seemingly felt nothing, who wanted – lusted – for the thrill of the kill. 

Shots streaked across the sky once more, as the sniper was forced to take more and more precarious positions as the teen cackled with glee, zooming around her, tying her into knots.

“I always knew you were a bitch! You were too fucking cold and aloof not to be one, and now here’s the evidence! You’re heartless, you know that? You might have thought that you were the one getting hurt with your husband, but I bet you deserved it I bet that you were like this with him, too! I bet he didn’t even try to hurt you – you probably made it up, so you could feel better about shooting him.”

The sniper unloaded a spider onto the ground, as she tied her hair into a ponytail, and pulled herself to another ledge, scoping up.

“And that’s probably why you’re a sniper isn’t it?”

Jets overheated behind her, but D.Va didn’t care. Grandma was a piece of work, but fuck it, she’d kill the whole world before she let her come to harm.

“You don’t even want to fight anyone.”

Shots cut into Widowmaker’s skin, and she numbed her senses again. Her skin turned lost its pallor, slowly turning blue, as she tried to kill all feeling in her whole body. It was working. Nothing D.Va said was getting to her anymore.

“You just want to lord it over us all, as you sit there, a smug little piece of shit, and take us out one by one!”

The rifle came alive underneath her hands, and slowly – agonisingly slowly – the mech inched towards her, the gun’s charge increasing. Widowmaker’s heartbeat slowed: a side effect of numbing the pain, or of her focus. Which it was, was indeterminable. There was a small click as the weapon reached its full potential.

“Are you even listening?”

A shot fired into the centre of D.Va’s mech, and the international superstar was launched headfirst out of the back of her mech. The look on her face as she was forced to leave was nothing short of delicious. “La veuve tisse sa toile.” A high pitched chuckle came out of her throat, and she watched the teen land on the roof, her M.E.K.A. disappearing into a pink glow, body crumpled and spread-eagled as Zarya, Mercy and Pharah finally made their way onto the site of the latest mess. 

A stream of frantic texts from Satya had got the two of them onto the roof, and Mercy stopped to fix the injuries of those there, before launching into the sky with her girlfriend to chase down the widow. She sighed down her scope. If everyone comes along one at a time, where’s the pressure? They shouldn’t let themselves get isolated or even allow themselves to take her on. She was far more skilled than these pests.

So why couldn’t she line up the shot on the two of them? They darted around her, like a pair of flies, but infinitely more dangerous and hard to swat. They buzzed just the same, though. A drivel which consisted of “Look out!”, and “To your left!” and other meaningless words, only serving to distract Widowmaker. One of them wasn’t even shooting at her, and the other had shots which moved slower than could be believed, so it wasn’t as if she were in trouble. It was mostly their constant movement, and how they never stopped helping each other, like they had to tell each other to breathe. She wouldn’t be surprised if they did. 

A fresh annoyance made itself known to her. Zarya hadn’t done anything so far, presumably due to her lack of mobility and range. But, as grenades applied more pressure to her spot, she was forced to move once again. And suddenly, there was a rhythm going on between ground and air. There were three perches she could reach, and so whenever she was pressured on one, she flew to another. The issue came when Mercy began to flit between ground and sky, and suddenly Pharah was firing rockets to one perch, and Zarya was slewing grenades at the one she was at, forcing her to move. At first, their timings were just out enough for the murderer to know which was safe, her focus giving her the seconds she needed. But suddenly the game changed again, as Pharah fired again as she moved. There was now a need to get away, and so she went to more dangerous tactics. 

She launched herself towards a balcony just out of her reach and used the momentum of launching herself to land upon it. She dropped a mine as she blew the couple a kiss, dropping off of the balcony with a grace as only someone who feels nothing - not even the impact of her body on the pavement, from two storeys up - can manage.

* * *

“Say, wouldn’t it be easier for you if you were to have a partner?”

Widowmaker focused down her barrel again, shooting off the minions of this witch, ignoring the cat. Each of them was a different frostbitten finger, some with rings most, without. Perhaps this witch had died of the cold? 

“Oh? And who would you have in mind?”

“Well, you should know of the potential Lena has. Your marksmanship and damage are good, but your speed sorely lacks. Perhaps if you could–”

“As much as I am indebted to you for hiding my presence from the mother of the group, that’s all I will thank you for. Lena still has a chance to leave this mess. Leave her alone.”

“Or what?”

A shot sent its response.

* * *

“Mother. Can I ask why Lena is asleep?” Pharah ventured her eyes towards the figure asleep at the table after Mercy had helped her carry her in. She had decided that, if she was to carry the girl, she would now why she had to.

“Why do you think?” Ana turned from the game D.Va was playing, to try and relieve some of the tension that had built up during the day.

“I believe that you’ve hit her with a sleep dart, which is why she’s passed out, but I don’t know why. Would you mind talking to me about it?”

Ana sighed but relented nonetheless. They sat at the table, and Mercy joined them because of Pharah’s insistent look.

“You two know why we’re here, right? Have I told you? I’m pretty sure that I’ve told you.” Shaking heads told Ana she’d got that wrong. “Okay then. So, who knows what caused the first omnic crisis?”

“You don’t need to talk to us like that – we’re not five, Mum. No one knows what happened.”

“Wrong. The omnic crisis was caused by the world’s biggest witch, who was destroyed by my original team, although all of them were killed over the course of the fight.”

“You said that you lost track of each other after a few years!”

“You were five, Fareeha. What was I going to say? ‘Those friends in all my pictures? Yeah, we used to fight evil monsters with magic, and now they’re all dead. Never become a magical girl, dear!’”

Mercy giggled, in spite of herself. “Sorry, sorry! I’m just imagining five-year-old Pharah being told that at the kitchen table, and then running outside making a contract immediately.”

“You laugh, but that’s the point of this discussion. If Lena made a contract today when she could see Widowmaker as herself for the first time, would she have made a good wish? Or would she have made a selfless wish, and ended up regretting it?”

“I made a selfless wish, and I turned out fine!” Pharah interjected.

“Yes, but you’re living with your mother at thirty-two and your ideal partner isn’t a French murderer, she’s a medic with mental health training. You’re in a far safer place than Lena will ever be. Which also reminds me – since you two are in such a good place right now, which one of you is proposing and when? I give my blessing, yada yada.”

Mercy and Pharah blushed, and got into an argument with their mother about how they weren’t proposing yet, that they’d only been together for a few years, that they weren’t quite that serious yet. And so everyone missed Lena until the lift had dinged and was going back down again.

* * *

“Chérie! You got my message.” Widowmaker spun around on the balcony of her hotel room.

“Yeah, well, fat lot of good it did me. You wanted to see me – so here I am! Get to the point.” Lena glared from the doorway, slouching against it, avoiding her gaze.

“Look, I just wanted a moment to apologise. I know that everything has changed so much, so I wanted to take the next day or so to apologise to you. You can stay here if you like, but I won’t make you. I just... I just really wanted to see you again.”

“Yeah, well, you got what you wanted. I’m gonna leave now.”

“Lena, please wait! I’m not going to be here much longer. With Ana and her daughter running around asking for my head as if I were Marie Antoinette, and she the leader of the revolution, I have no chance if I stay here much longer. So I’m only here until tomorrow.”

“D.Va was right. You are a coward.”

“Maybe I am. But one last thing – before you leave.”

“Get to the point already.”

“I may be leaving tomorrow, but that does give us one night together.”

Lena blushed, in spite of herself. Yeah, she’d lied to everyone, but at the same time, she hadn’t exactly done it out of choice, right? And it’s not like everyone had been incredibly kind to her, especially after they found out she’d murdered her husband. So maybe it was okay to just do this with her – just once. She wasn’t going to see her again, anyway, so she’d be out of her life forever that way.

“And so what are we going to do with this night of ours?”

Widowmaker smiled. “Whatever you want, chérie.”

* * * 

Lena stretched, waking up next to Widowmaker. That was quite the night – she never knew that Widowmaker could cook so well before! That meal was like nothing else. And the rest of the night had been, well, something she enjoyed.

“Good morning, Lena. What time is it?”

Lena picked her watch off of the floor. “It’s onze heures.”

Widowmaker laughed at her accent. “Don’t do that again! Or, at least, don’t let me hear you.”

A moment passed between the two of them wherein they locked eyes and thought about how they probably weren’t going to see each other again after today.  
And then they both moved on. They dressed themselves and were about to have a breakfast together, when suddenly Lena jumped on top of Widowmaker, to knock her to the ground. A shot cracked through the air above them.

“Ana. How did she find us?”

Widowmaker reached for her ring, but Lena got to it before her.

“Chérie?”

“If you do this, one of you is going to kill the other, and I won’t let that happen!” Lena found tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m really, really sorry!”

Lena ran from the room, and through the lobby. If she could just get it away from Widowmaker, she and Ana would have to talk, and then it would get fixed. Right? She was going to get away from the mess, and by the time she got back, they would have talked everything through, and everything would be sorted. Then Widowmaker wouldn’t have to leave, and they could spend night after night like the one they’d just had, and their lives would be complete. Widowmaker would join the group, and Lena would make her wish – something sappy, probably about her relationship – and then they would never have to leave. 

This just has to be right.

* * *

Widowmaker was running too, as fast as she possibly could. She was only a few metres behind Lena, but for someone with such short legs, god, was she fast!  
“Lena! Please, slow down! I’ll talk to Ana, or whatever it is you want me to do! I just need my ring back!”

Lena ignored her and sped up again. They were going to go to the house, and there she’d get her ring back.

“Lena! Please! I can’t keep up anymore!”

But Lena kept running, and then Widowmaker was slowing, and then–

* * *

Lena was at the house and looked behind her. Shouldn’t Widowmaker be behind her? But it was fine, right? She’d done everything right, and now she went into the flat, to find a waiting Ana.

“Where is the sniper?”

“She should be behind me, honest!”

“Fine. Next question: Why do you have her soul gem?”

“She was going to fight you, so if she doesn’t have her ring, she can’t transform and fight, right?”

Ana slowly sat down and put Lena next to her. “Do you know why it’s called a soul gem?”

Lena shook her head. 

“It contains the soul, and if it is more than one hundred metres away from its owner for too long, the owner will die.”

“You mean that-“

“You can check if you want. The fact of the matter is that you’ve killed her.”

Lena took off again, back to where she had left Widowmaker.

“Does this change your estimation for our combined energy release?”

Kyubey shook its head. “Negative. We accounted for one more pre-Schatten death, and believe that the energy you will release will still be adequate.”

“So be it.”

* * *

“Amélie! Please, Amélie, wake up!”

Widowmaker’s body lay crumpled on the floor, and Lena lay there with it, tears seeping into the pavement.

“Come on! I’ve brought you your soul and everything! Just wake up!”

No response. She felt for her pulse and felt nothing. Her skin was cold, like that of someone whose blood hasn't flowed in a long time.

“Do you have a wish in mind yet?”

Lena turned towards Kyubey.

“Can... Can I wish her back to life?”

“Negative. Doing so requires you sacrifice your own life.”

“And – And if I do?”

“By our calculations, if you were to raise Widowmaker from the dead, she would probably commit suicide within a week. Regardless of that, we simply aren’t allowing that wish. Choose again.”

“It was me being late that caused this, right? I...”

“I wish to never be late again. I wish I was fast enough that nothing is ever going to hold me down ever again.”

“The contract is sealed.”

Lena Oxton kissed Amélie’s forehead for the last time, as her soul left her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the turning point! We have like, seven members of the cast left? And I want only one left by the eleventh chapter, so have fun guessing who that is (It's fairly obvious, to be fair)! Anyway, expect higher death frequency soon.
> 
> Sorry for how short this one was! I had a backlog of homework and other messes to sort out when I go back, so this was written Friday evening and Saturday morning, and edited just now. Normally, I'd have written about five hundred words a day and then edited just before uploading, but there was a lot of stuff i had to do all week.
> 
> So that the next chapter isn't bogged down by opening with this: episode seven in the anime is going to be skipped in this fic, on the basis of it being a subversion of the original slice of life and Sayaka's life going wrong to provide basis for her turning into a witch. Sadly, this doesn't fit all that well in terms of pacing for the current plan for the fic, and I have chapter twelve reserved for something very different to chapter twelve in the anime. This means we're skipping seven, and going right onto eight (But using a subversion of seven's name bc I'm not giving up on that name scheme now, and it still fits for all of these)! 
> 
> Interesting to note: that's the one wherein Sayaka becomes a witch. Considering the parallels I've made between her and Widowmaker in this chapter, wouldn't it be thematically appropriate if she were to change next chapter? But she's dead now. Hmm. Wonder who is going to have to take that toll?
> 
> As always, feedback is what keeps my heart beating! Especially since there are bits of this chapter which I think are weaker than other chapters.


	7. I Don't Want To Face My True Feelings

Tracer breathed in and out, feeling the hum of magic in her toes, fingertips, soul. Or rather, she didn’t. She felt nothing in her soul. Her soul glowed blue in the centre of her chest, and she felt nothing in it. She felt no animosity to the void. Everything was numbed.

Was this how Widowmaker had felt?

She ignored the cat, who wanted to bring her nothing but ruin, and sped on, leaving the body on the floor, soul gem alongside it. Someone else could deal with that. Not her. She jumped and knew what she could do. She blinked forward, arriving at the house before anyone else knew she had been gone. No laughter escaped her smile-free mouth, as she felt the absence of Widowmaker in her heart. She missed her. 

She missed her in her toes, her fingertips, her soul. Did she really feel nothing, or did she feel the absence of Widowmaker, the absence of Amélie Lacroix, so strongly that nothing else could ever fill the gap she had left? She found a tear on her face and blinked in surprise. Why was this happening? She should be able to numb anything now. 

She and Widowmaker were different no longer. And if Widowmaker could numb the pain of killing someone, then Tracer could numb the pain of someone dying.

“Are you okay?”

Chloe sat at the receptionist’s desk, unchanging and yet so different. Tracer felt nothing and crafted what seemed the best lie.  
“Breakup.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want to talk? I can talk for years on flower arrangements, or useless Pokémon trivia, or baking if you want something to keep your mind off of it.”

“I think that I’d rather just push through.”

“Okay then, I guess. I hope you feel better soon.”

Tracer realised that Chloe could have stopped at “feel”.

* * *

Ana sat, still feeling numb on the sofa, as she saw the newly-contracted Tracer come through the door. She hugged her, squeezing her harder than was probably necessary, trying to get the blood circulating again as she felt tears unload into her shoulder.

“Breathe. You’re not remembering to breathe. ”

Gasping, sobbing breaths emanated as the due sat on the sofa. Eventually, everyone else clustered around them, and Ana relayed the long, sorry tale. There were some gasps, some refutations, but Ana saw Mercy’s eyes, and how the loss of her soul wasn’t news to her.

“Did none of you realise the meaning of-”

D.Va pounced on the cat and held its neck tight until it stopped struggling, her own eyes filled with a fiery heat which barely escaped through the water film her tears presented. The new arrival ate as it spoke.

“-the name soul gem? There’s no need to hide what it is. Whilst the primary use is to store the soul away from the body to allow the modification of the vessel for maximisation of combat abilities, it does allow us to push any pain we feel onto someone else.”

D.Va began to shriek and then lay on the floor, writhing in agony, feeling the pain of an organism whose cells were dying. Ana shot a dart into the neck of the creature, transforming as she freed D.Va.

“What it doesn’t want you to know is that it can only transfer the pain, and not the wound itself. The pain’ll kill you: make no mistake. But there is no physical wound.”

“Why!” D.Va heaved. “Why are you calling Kyubey an ‘it’?” She paused, her breath slowly returning to her. “Isn’t he... Our friend?”

“He put your soul in glass, Hana. Do you think he only has your best interests at heart? Did you never question why he never appears to be in pain or even move when talking, staring unblinkingly as his eyes betray no emotion?”

“That’s an exaggeration.” D.Va struggled, as she rose.

“True. But he isn’t to be blindly trusted.”

“But why? Why would he do this to us?”

“There’s something else you all should know. About what happens to-“

But D.Va’s screams cut through Ana’s words, as the creature stood up once more, an unnatural metabolism cutting through the drugs Ana pumped into it. Zarya transformed and bubbled D.Va as Ana sleep darted again. 

“We can’t keep her here any longer! Zarya, take D.Va and bubble if anything happens, and we’ll occupy the creature until it is over the grudge! Go!”  
Zarya hoisted D.Va over her shoulder, and Mercy and Pharah shared an uneasy glance.

* * *

Zarya admired the view from the clock-tower, the churning cogs beneath her feet reassuring her that despite everything, time still progressed as it should. But then she started to think of the time she spent here with Mei, and then she thought of Mei, and then she was thinking of how she was dead and how she could have saved her and-

Zarya bit down, hard, on her arm to break herself out of the loop that led to. She never used to do that, but Mei’s death was making it more and more difficult to move on. She couldn’t help but find herself pinching herself, or saying “No!” unceasingly whenever she started to go down that path. She knew she was just compartmentalising, that this would bring her nothing good in the end, but she was stuck.

She stopped a moment to breathe, as the wind blew against her face, and she tried to focus on staying in the moment. D.Va yawned, as she woke herself up, neck aching as she moved it again.

“Where am I?”

Zarya didn’t turn to face her. “Top of the clock-tower. Ana had me bring you here after Kyubey woke up and shunted the pain onto you again.”

“How did we get up here, then?”

“Did you forget how high we can jump? Especially me! My muscles were augmented, and I can beat your scrawny ones even without being a magical girl.”

“I guess that makes sense. So, what are we gonna do? I... I don’t wanna go back to the house yet.”

“I don’t either. But I brought you up here to talk, not so that you could escape the things you don’t want to face.”

“So? What is it?”

“D.VA... You fought in the omnic crisis, yes? I don’t have to tell you how awful it was. But you know that anywhere unprotected got swallowed up by those metal monstrosities faster than anywhere else. Do you remember that we were still holding the Olympics a few years on, for whatever reason? Even though nothing from the crisis had been fixed, and people were still dying from its effects, people still wanted to sit down and watch the games, like they meant more than what was happening outside. Perhaps that’s all that we really want when everything around us is chaos. Ignoring the problems in front of us, like they’ll solve themselves if we don’t. But life isn’t like that – you and I know that best, after everything that’s happened these last few days. With Mei dead, it’s more obvious than ever that there were things I should have told her.”

Zarya paused for a moment, and D.Va was frightened by the lack of strength in the world-record-holder. “She was the centre of my life for so long, and she was, truly, what I cared about the most. And yet there were days where I didn’t even tell her that I loved her once. Not even once! For someone who claims to love someone else, it feels bad to know that. I have regrets like that, and I know you do too. But the one thing I don’t regret is my wish.”

This too, seemed to cause Zarya pain, from what D.Va could see of her face from behind. “On the night of the Olympics, I was expected to win gold for Russia, but it was not to be. News of the omnium firing up again reached me, and then Kyubey presented himself to me, with the opportunity to save everyone there. Of course, I accepted, and of course, I had to quit the Olympics. I gave up everything to save everyone in my town. And I would never undo it.”

Finally, Zarya turned to face her. “I would never undo my wish. But the problem is, everything that’s happened recently is making you question whether or not this is the right thing for you anymore, and whether you wished for the right thing. My advice to you is to not care. I gave up everything for my dream that I could – time, money, everything that could be asked of me, I gave. And when it became clear that I would have to give up on my dream or other people, after everything I had done, I did so in a heartbeat. Because what I did, I did for other people, first and foremost. You and I are different, I know that. You are far more self-centered, and that’s not an inherently bad thing: in fact, it’s something I need to work on. But when you care so little as to not give anything for someone else, ever in your existence, it puts a strain on your relationships, and on you. No one should be giving up everything for everyone else like I did, even if done with the best of intentions. But no one should care so little as to not give anything at all. A balance in this, as in all things, is necessary. I hope you have the strength to recognise that.”

D.Va seemed to be on the verge of tears, for the first time since Zarya had seen her. 

“You’re right. I mean, I guess. Not like it happens often or anything. But...”

Zarya leant against the ledge, as she listened patiently.

“But you are right. I am sort of regretting my wish. And like, it’s not like I regret what it brought me – because I would be famous anyway, right? My personality is just that magnetic: if I had kept up the streaming without the wish, people would have started to follow me naturally. And I did have the skills. It was just that my wish sort of amplified everything even further. My magnetic personality became hypnotic. My minor league gaming became national. And, well, my sizable following soon came to encompass so many people.”

Neither of them moved. D.Va couldn’t remember opening up to anyone else like this in, well, forever. “It wasn’t like anything else I’ve ever had. It was so much fun, I never wanted it to end, and I’ve never questioned it. This! This is the life I was meant to lead, from the moment I was born! I am a creature of the spotlight and there’s no way that anyone could ever stop me from getting into it. But when I was offered a fast-track, I took it anyway. And it makes everything feel hollow, and empty, full of promises and not actions. I’ve got to where I am now by cheating my way through to an international stage.”

Zarya nodded and didn’t push her to act. But D.va had started now, and she didn’t want to stop, even if it was embarrassing her. Who else would she talk to? It’s not like there was anyone else on the team even close to being as famous as she was. Zarya was famous within her niche, so she supposed that that was enough.  
“And... And I’m not sure anymore. Of how I feel, I mean. It could be that my wish was always this hollow and that I just didn’t notice until now, but I don’t think that that’s what happened. I think I’ve always felt this empty. I think that since the second I said ‘I wish’ I haven’t felt the same, and I don’t know if that’s because of seeing all that death, or because of my wish, or because of being a magical girl in itself. I don't know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to face my true feelings.”

D.Va began fiddling with her ring, the small gem set in it reducing to darker and darker shades of pink as she did so. “And now it turns out that my soul has been reduced to some stupid glowing light in a glass prism and it just doesn’t feel fair. It doesn’t feel like it’s right, that someone like me can be reduced to something like that along with the rest of you. It’s not fair, and it shouldn’t be happening. And maybe everything since then has felt so number because of the contract and it just feels so, so bad and I don’t even like you and I’m telling you all this I can’t believe what I’m doing-”

Zarya saw D.Va fiddle with her gem, which was slowly filling up with black. “D.Va, what you’re talking about is important, but you need to give me your gem.”

“What? Why? It’s my soul! I’m not giving you my soul! You swine! You’re just like everyone else! I open up to you and then you betray me. You’re-”

A sleep dart hit her neck for the second time that day, as Ana jumped up to meet them. “Kyubey is being taken care of by my daughters, by blood and soon-to-be-in-law.” She bent down and cleansed D.Va’s gem. 

“How did you know you needed to be here?” Zarya shook her head, incredulous.

“It tipped me off that something bad was going to happen to her soon unless I intervened. So I intervened.” Ana shrugged. “I’m good, but not that good!”

“But then how did you know where we were?” Zarya’s gaze and gait did not change, despite the abnormally comfortable gait of Ana.

“I just did! The important thing is that I got here in time to save her, right? Who cares how?”

Zarya frowned, as she picked up D.Va once more, and they jumped back to the house. 

* * *

Tracer didn’t want to do anything. She lay there, staring at the ceiling on the sofa everyone pretended was communal, but gave invariably to D.Va when she asked. The lift doors dinged, but she didn’t get up. She simply stared, lifeless, gaze darting between her newly blue ring and the expressionless, meaningless tiles, which held an infinite matrix of meaninglessness in them. How long had she been there? Minutes, hours, seconds, days? Did it matter?

Ana shook her. “Move.” Without so much as another word, she simply pushed Tracer off, leaving D.Va in her wake.

“Oi!” came an angry voice from the floor, although it made no move to get up. Instead, Zarya had to hoist her up, and Tracer hated herself for admiring the way in which her muscles caught the light and her breath. Wid- Amélie had just died, and yet she was already moving on? Disgraceful. She should be dead. 

“D.Va can’t lie over Zarya’s back forever. Sorry.” Ana replied as she began to make tea. “Do you want any, Tracer?”

“How d’you know the name I chose? Or that I even chose a name?”

“One, we all end up choosing a name after our transformation. I don’t know why, but we’re all attracted to it, even if it’s just your first name, like mine is. Secondly, D.Va helped you pick it out this morning, and anything she knows you might as well assume I know. In fact, anything you know, I probably know. I probably know you better than you do.”

“How come?”

“Because if I didn’t constantly take care of this team’s mental health, you all would be dead ages ago. Now drink!”

Tracer drank the sweet, milky tea, and thought of Amélie as she drained the last dregs from it. The weather outside was that of a brisk autumn afternoon, and she began feeling something which wasn’t peace but wasn’t despair. She existed, and found solace in that.

* * *

Blood surged through veins, slowly and carefully, as if it hadn’t for years. As though someone had suppressed their circulation, in a naive attempt to stop all feeling in her body. This someone felt her body on the cold, hard ground, pavement digging into her back, and sat up.

“Why aren’t you dead?” The cat turned away from Tracer’s retreating figure to Widowmaker’s face. “By our calculations, you should already be dead. Why aren’t you?”

“I didn’t feel like it.” Widowmaker held her head high, sarcasm oozing from her throat. 

“Recalculating...” The creature stopped for a moment, as Widowmaker scanned the area around her, transforming, in preparation to leave. “The most likely cause is that you slowed your heart drastically over time, through the use of magic. This meant that when your soul let you, and your heart stopped beating, it did not cause immediate death, as your body was accustomed to longer periods of time without a heartbeat. Brain-death was avoided by storing your consciousness in the gem, as opposed to relying on circulation.”

“Like I said. I didn’t feel like it.” Widowmaker responded. She turned her head towards the house. “I’m leaving now. Don’t follow me.”

She latched onto the nearest building and left, swinging as she got closer and closer to her destination. Kyubey eyed her helmet, the orbs filling with black.

* * *

“C’mon Tracer. Get up.” 

Tracer, who refused to move from the sofa again, was shoved off for the second time, this time by granddaughter as opposed to grandmother. She watched the pixels dance and move in a pattern only they knew, and D.Va won, eventually. She kept playing, and Tracer was captivated, and even began yelling out her advice (Getting muted immediately by the more skilled of the two).

Eventually, Ana came into the kitchen to make dinner. The table was laid, with the triple of the empty chairs removed and stacked in a corner, for convenience’s sake. Ana fiddled with the dimmer switch for a bit, but soon gave up and placed candles on the table instead. The ambience was quiet, and revered, and Ana found herself thinking of the other sniper. She quickly moved past it, though. 

D.Va and Tracer came and sat at the table eventually, as Ana got the other four. Satya sat next to Tracer as usual, but the loss of both Amélie and Lena made her feel awkward, conscious of the fact that she was the only one not to have made a wish. Mercy and Pharah sat as usual, although Ana opted to sit next to Mercy instead, and kept dropping hints that they should propose to one another soon throughout the meal. It was funny, and Tracer couldn’t help but find herself laughing alongside the others. The candlelight shone in everyone’s face in a way which gave them a slight reflective sheen, and the fickle, flickering lights danced to and fro. 

Everyone kept complimenting Ana on the food, and Mercy asked her for the recipe, which led to Ana asking if she was worried Fareeha would leave her without Ana’s cooking. Another round of laughs echoed around the table, and, for the first evening since she had arrived, Tracer found everyone smiling.

* * *

Widowmaker sat on the balcony outside, looking into the room of smiles and laughter. No one seemed to be in the least upset about her. She sighed. So be it. She had merely come to see Tracer before she left for good, but got caught when she noticed the ring now adorning Tracer’s finger. She knew she couldn’t, that she had no chance, but she had a very strong desire to simply come back in - as if that would fix anything, as if they would let her back into their fold.

But she knew that couldn’t happen. And so, as she turned to leave, her heart caught in her mouth when Tracer blinked out onto the balcony, shouting “Amélie!”

And Widowmaker was so shocked, that combined with the depressing weight of never seeing any of them again, the heavy magic usage of the day, the glares of anger and recognition from everyone else inside, that her soul gem gave out with a small crack, and the tinkle of shattered glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/overwatch.gamepedia.com/3/30/D.Va_-_Winky_face.ogg
> 
> In all seriousness, I'd like to take a moment to apologise. Did the D.Va moment in the middle have you convinced I was going to witch her?
> 
> Also, one thousand hits! Yay!
> 
> Obligatory comment about please give me feedback


	8. You Were So Weak. So Weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are warnings specific to this chapter, which are in the bottom notes.

Tracer watched in sheer terror as Widowmaker’s body shifted and changed in front of her eyes. Skin bulged in places as something terrible inside of her yearned to be free. Her yellow eyes were devoid of consciousness as they stared, glazed over, in front of herself. Her mouth opened, and then widened further, the jaw dislocating and then continuing to bend, skin and flesh tearing as it lay in parallel to the roof of her mouth. Her throat bulged and darkness gushed out, striking Tracer away as cracks appeared in Widowmaker’s skin and tenebrosity began to burst out from all angles. As more and more burst out, it began to take form, an abomination with eight red, gleaming eyes. It screeched, and Widowmaker’s ragdoll body was bent into unnatural angles under its feet, empty. It seized the carcass, before forming its own labyrinth.  
  
Tracer was too shocked to respond to the nightmare before her own eyes. She watched in abject trepidation, her mouth open in a cruel mockery of Amélie’s. She felt her arms go as limp as Amélie’s and she had to steel herself not to throw up. Inside, D.Va was throwing up, into a hastily procured bucket. Zarya sat next to her, face gaunt and unflinching as her hands trembled. Was this the fate which would have awaited Mei, had she not died?  
  
Pharah and Mercy turned to each other at the same moment, their faces the reflection of the other’s, Mercy’s a deathly pallor, Pharah’s greying as crimson fled the capillaries and veins in her face. They gripped onto each other tightly, not speaking. Satya watched the group, fingers fiddling with themselves, trying to distract herself from the thought which lurked in the back of her brain. The thought called to her nonetheless. “Aren’t you glad we didn’t contract?” She fumed to herself, quietly.  
  
Only Ana moved, fetching the bucket for D.Va, trying to work out how to play this.  
  
“What... What do we do?” Tracer stared out into the night sky, previously thinking that it was black, but now appearing a deep navy blue in comparison to what she’d seen. “How? How can we go on?”  
  
“We do what we always do.” Everyone faced Ana, as they all did in times of crisis. “We kill the witch.”  
  
“That wasn’t a witch! That was Amélie!”  
  
“She was Amélie. Then she was Widowmaker. Then the despair she had felt consumed her.”  
  
“What do you mean? How are you so calm about this? Did you know? Did you know that that’s where witches came from?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter! There isn’t the time for this! Widowmaker was powerful, and so her witch will destroy hundreds of people, if not thousands, unless it is stopped. So which would you rather do? Argue about something which we can’t even change anymore? Or use the abilities you have now to save someone? Because those are your only two options now! She’s dead, Tracer. She was dead to you already. Nothing’s changed in that regard. Grieve and mourn when we get back – not when you’re wasting time that witch is using to hurt people.”  
  
Ana left and yet still no one moved. D.Va stayed, head bent over hew bowl, as Zarya placed her hand on her back in a vain attempt at comfort. Pharah tried to pull Mercy to get up, but she refused, shell-shocked to her core. Satya stood up, as if to follow, but instead pulled Tracer to her feet.  
  
“I’m not so sure if I agree with Ana. The way in which Widowmaker was dead before is not the same as she is now, and having spoken the final words to her must hurt. I’m not going to pretend I understand what happened to her, but all I know is that that thing came from Widowmaker. Would she want it roaming the streets? Hurting other people? She may have been hurtful to other people, but she wasn’t the kind of person who’d leave a monster of her own creation on the streets hurting people. She was the kind of person who would beat it into the ground, first chance she got. So go! Go, and do what she can’t anymore! Fight for truth, and for justice, and for kindness. Fight so the world she’s left behind isn’t one wherein all that happens is you sit idly and ignore the problems in it.”  
  
Tracer looked at Satya, and flashed a weak smile, which was returned. She took off into the night sky, the open expanse wherein what remained of Widowmaker lay.  
  
* * *  
  
“Oho! So someone came to her senses!” Ana smirked at her, with an air of Mother-knows-best, but found herself rebutted. Ana still hadn’t found the witch; even with the time it took for Tracer to search the many streets.  
  
“No thanks to you – Satya’s better at giving speeches than you’ll ever be. You’re completely wrong: it’s not the same, now that Amélie is what she is. But I’ll be damned if I let her ghost haunt more people than she’d want.”  
  
“And how many people would that be? You’re probably a bit late, if you said none. The typical uptake of a new witch is around two or three within their first few hours.”  
  
“As few as possible. After all, isn’t that what she’d want? She wasn’t the kindest of people, but she never hurt people she didn’t think deserved it.”  
  
“So what did my eye do, to deserve her wrath? I give good evil eyes, but not quite to that extent.”  
  
“Just because she had reasons doesn’t mean they were good ones. People can do awful, terrible things, and still have reasons for it. They talk to themselves over and over, and slowly they convince themselves that what they’re doing is the right thing, even when it’s not.”  
  
“You’ve changed.”  
  
“Have I? I’m not Lena Oxton, sure, but I’m not a new person. Being fast isn’t exactly something new for me! And it’s true that not a lot happened in my life before this, but a few days of anything still don’t wipe out everything that came before it.”  
  
The two women shared a look, neither of them sure of the other, but both certain of the feeling that had stretched between them. Tracer was right. She shared all of her tastes, her fears, her expectations with Lena Oxton. She just had more experience behind it now.  
  
* * *  
  
The labyrinth was plain weird. It was a gothic French cafe, which stretched for miles in every direction, tables and chairs and cups endlessly repeating, with stony, aged arches and rotten wooden doors which gave the entire space the impression of unbelievable age. Caricatures of Amélies, with wide smiles and entirely black eyes, flitted between tables, heels clicking on the floor, hair tied into ponytails with a single string linking from them into one of the multitude of doors. Their customers were nonexistent, and they endlessly poured more and more coffee into cups which were overflowing, a thick, syrupy liquid overflowing onto the floor and draining into drains, covered by metallic grates, standing out from the marbled tiling of the rest of the floor. That which wasn’t touched by coffee was touched by a white lace, which covered everything as if attempting to hide it from the world around. Above, the strings danced a complex dance which followed no visible pattern, each seemingly leading to a different door, perfectly in time with the jaunty, jittery music which echoed from carefully placed gramophones.  
  
Tracer started to cry again, tears dripping into the mass of coffee on the floor, following the river which ran to the grates. Was this all Amélie had left behind? A childish caricature of the person she was, now nothing but an echo trapped in a small space, reverberating like a secret that no one wanted known.  
  
Ana hugged her. “You don’t have to do this” she said. She told Tracer how she could do it herself, how it was good of her to try, but at the end of the day, no one needed her to take this burden on. And with that, she strode ahead, and Tracer simply followed. They went through door after door, some sixth sense inside of Ana telling her which way to go, as if she’d seen this place before. The strings slowly grew more and more numerous as they went along, and the sole of Tracer’s shoes was surely stained a dark, sickly black from the heavy mass which poured away slowly, getting thicker with each door they passed through. Dust settled on the lace doilies, which Tracer now saw for what they were – cobwebs, thick and spun as heavily as cotton.  
  
Eventually, as the maze lead nowhere, Ana began to get more and more fretful. Amélie’s constantly smiling faces followed them everywhere, and Tracer began to remember how she’d woken up yesterday, and how the sum of everything she’d lost had led her here.  
  
How Amélie had led her here.  
  
Ana was trying a new approach. She knelt down on top of a grate, and began to try and unscrew it. The grate’s size increased as she did so, in a manner which defied all logic, and the dolls noticed their presence for the first time. Tracer grabbed her guns, and backed up to Ana as they encircled them. She darted through them, firing shot after shot as their circle continued to tighten, ignoring the loss of their compatriots. Instead, Ana was forced to retaliate, firing a grenade at her feet and causing them to disperse. Tracer darted around, dodging their slow strikes, but finding that as she moved round them, they began to get faster and faster, eventually keeping an equal pace with her. The strands attached to the back of their heads wrapped round her and enveloped her, and she began to struggle as they marched forward. At the last second, when they were barely apart from her, she winked out of existence, freed from their strings and appearing behind them. A barrage of bullets pelted their backs, and they fell to the ground. Ana finally pried the cover off of the grate, and looked into the hole. Beneath them lay a vast web, coffee pouring in from above at regular intervals and splashing onto the bodies of those wrapped in the witch’s web. Tracer peered in with her.  
  
“Where’s the monster?”  
  
Ana shrugged her shoulders, and dropped down into the depths of the labyrinth. Tracer breathed a breath of stale air, filled with the perfume Amélie always wears. Used to wear. And then she plunged into the below.  
  
They first noticed how much the web stuck. Even lifting their feet was a challenge, let alone running. Tracer started to blink instead of walk, carrying Ana with her, thus avoiding the problem. Their every step caused the web to bounce erratically, and sometimes it would grow to be so much that they would stand still for a second or two. Then they would hear scurrying, coming at them from all sides, and Tracer shivered visibly.  
  
“Not a fan of spiders?” Ana’s voice echoed loudly, far too loudly to be proportional to the dimensions of the room. The acoustics were all off; or maybe it was just that Ana was speaking on her back.  
  
“Not when they’re the form of my dead love, nope. Not even when they’re not. They’re just freaks of nature. Nothing should have that many legs!”  
  
“Yeah, well-”  
  
Ana’s voice was cut off by a cracking sound to their left. Tracer spun around, the web sticking to her shoes and throwing her off balance, compounded by Ana’s additional weight. Ana quickly scampered off of her back and they readied – and steadied – themselves.  
  
One of the cocoons was opening. The person inside had long since died, presumably from suffocation, and now their coffin was splitting open down the middle. The thickly woven web bulged in places it most definitely shouldn’t, as something terrible inside of it yearned to be free. Darkness began to gush out, and Ana hit it with a sleep dart.  
  
“Nope. Nuh-uh. We’re not seeing that again.” She threw a biotic grenade at it, and Tracer blinked over to it, firing round after round in until the leg which had started to come out fell into the abyss below, followed by pieces of the cocoon, and then the rest of the spider’s body.  
  
“Is that how-”  
  
“-familiars become witches? Not most of the time, but Widowmaker did have a flair for the dramatic. This place represents her mind at the moment she turned. Not the whole thing, mind you. Just the worst parts of it. There are no pictures of you or anything because she must have truly valued you as a person. Instead, the strings attached to the waitresses and the abyss below presumably mean that she felt like she was being controlled by something out of sight, and that she had two parts to her personality.”  
  
“And what part of her is responsible for making that thing stink like absolute shit? Like, really.”  
  
The putrid aroma had Ana’s lip curled alongside Tracer’s, but they continued to walk onwards, shooting and destroying any cocoons they came across as they slowly ventured to the middle of the web. There, they found Widowmaker’s carcass, not yet cocooned. Up close, the body looked completely flat, and empty, as if everything inside had been scooped out by a melon baller. It was bizarre and unsettling to see, and Tracer puked over the side into the void. Tracer found herself anxiously shaking, and Ana backed up to her. Clattering legs and chattering teeth could be heard closing in from opposite directions, and as they held each other tightly, two of the witches clambered into view, two pairs of eight eyes beadily picking them out from the background as they readied themselves for a fight. Ana tossed Tracer a grief seed, as she sent a sleep dart out, hitting the chitinous armour of the arachnid. It failed to penetrate.  
  
“Tracer! My shots won’t go through their armour! The only hope we have is if you can use your ult right.”  
  
Tracer danced round the arachnids, her bullets failing to do anything other than tickle the creatures. They swung legs at her, sharpened to a terrifying point not unlike that of Amélie’s stiletto heels. Tracer shuddered, but kept her shots firing nonetheless. She tried to aim for the eyes, but they were weirdly metallic, the orbs playing a melancholic tune as she hit them. She tried their spinnerets, but they simply closed them, covering their underbelly with more chitinous armour. She tried their clattering jaw, clanging echoing as, Tracer realised, even their teeth were metallic. If this was the manifestation of all of her fears, was this what she feared the most? Being eaten by something stoic and unchanging, herself becoming colder and colder and less responsive over time? Was Amélie afraid of Widowmaker? She cried out. “It’s useless, Ana. Useless. They’re too strong. I... I don’t know if I can be the one to kill her anyway.” Her shoulders slumped, neck drooped, soul gem blackened.  
  
“You have to hold on Tracer! You’ve been so, so incredibly strong! Look at you! The person you loved most was destroyed in front of your eyes, and you’re still walking? You’re still trying? You haven’t given up? Tracer, I tried to kill myself when I saw my first witch! It was one of my very best friends in the world. We were fighting a witch, as strong as this one, and she had to ult to destroy it, even though there were no more grief seeds. She turned, Tracer, right then and there, in front of my eyes. She said she was twenty years old, but I was thirteen, and I tried to hang myself. That thing – the white one saved me, and I contracted there to protect all magical girls so no one would end up like I did. So Allah help me, but if you die on me now, it will all have been for nothing. You remind me so, so much of myself back then, and if I can’t even save myself then... Then... What was this all for?” Tears fell from Ana’s face as she spoke, and her breath kept catching as Tracer slowly regained the will to fight, slowly started to dance around again. “So keep going! I believe in you, and I know you can do anything! You’re Tracer, but never forget that you were Lena Oxton. Never forget that girl’s shining, wide eyes, how her first reaction on seeing Amélie – a complete stranger! – was to fall in love, a love so vast that even now, when she’s threatening your life, you don’t want to hurt her. I love you, Tracer. You’re like a daughter to me. So don’t let that love be in vain! Fight! Fight until your last breath, until there’s nothing left in you! Don’t give into the despair – better to go down fighting than crying! You’re amazing!”  
  
Tracer’s gem renewed itself, without the use of a grief seed, and shot out a bitter, blinding white. A white made of every positive emotion she’d ever felt. Her love for Amélie. Her love for running. Her love of joy, of light, of happiness – of love itself. Her love for everyone she’d ever met.  
  
And it shone. It shone so, so brightly that the spiders screeched ass the very fibre of their being was ripped apart, destroyed, obliterated. Ana watched on, as Tracer reached a stage even she’d never reached. Only her very best friend had ever done this, a state of being made of as much hope as a witch was made of despair. And the tears simply poured, tears of pride, or love, or perhaps even hope itself.  
  
They laughed loudly enough on the way back that everyone looked at them funny, but they didn’t care. They had something between them now, a bond no one could ever hope to break.  
  
* * *  
  
When they finally arrived home, they found everyone in exactly the same position as they had left them. D.Va had been sick a few times, Zarya still sat, numb, next to her. Satya remained in her corner of the room, feeling the smooth texture of her notepad as she sang in Hindi quietly to herself, presumably some sort of stim. Pharah and Mercy only talked to each other in frightened, harsh tones.  
  
“How long have you known?” were the first words to shoot out of Mercy’s mouth, her accusatory tone catching Tracer off her guard. “How long have you known that we all eventually end up like those, those things?!”  
  
“Since I was thirteen. I didn’t tell anyone because this is how you’re reacting now – imagine how you would have coped if I had told you a few months after you all contracted? The thing that we’re all here to fight is the ghost of someone I knew, Angela! I tried to kill myself when she turned! If I left you all alone, at least one of you would today! So don’t act like I’ve hurt you by stopping you from hurting yourself!”  
  
“But you haven’t! You haven’t protected us at all! All you’ve done is hidden everything from us, and let us wander down a path we can’t even understand! And now it turns out either we die in combat – because I’ve noticed that we don’t get ill, even from the natural progression of time – or we turn into one of those things! Was everything we did for nothing?”  
  
“Not for nothing, Angela. We put people out of their misery, and protected everyone who would have been hurt otherwise. If we didn’t do this, who would?”  
  
“If we didn’t do this, wouldn’t there be fewer witches?”  
  
“Familiars can become witches on their own. If left unchecked, the witch population would soar out of control. I mean, Zarya’s town had no magical girl for around two years, and their omnium started up again, as a real world effect of the sheer density of witches in that area. Schatten herself is causing worldwide weather phenomena, like those earthquakes in Satya’s country. If the world will be destroyed by this system either way, isn’t it best if we make the best of this shit situation, and find a meaning in this madness? At the very least, we’re prolonging the lifetime of the earth, even if Schatten is evidence that it can’t be prevented forever. Anyone who destroys the most powerful witch of an age uses up enough magic to become a witch herself, and her ability to destroy the previous witch comes from being more powerful. Thus, an even bigger witch is created. The cycle continues until the biggest witch can’t be destroyed before she kills the planet. Such is our destiny – but what we can control is if we’re happy during it. And by not telling you, you’ve all avoided breakdowns like this whenever your soul gems got darker than usual. Be truthful to yourself – this method was simply safer.”  
“And what about Mei?”  
  
“The chance that Mei wouldn’t kill us all to stop us from witching is very, very low. It would be around a one in one thousand chance, according to Kyubey. If it wasn’t that witch, it would have been one of us who had to kill her after she murdered some of us.”  
  
“Ana, I don’t say this often, but shut the fuck up.” Zarya’s gruff voice came. “Your point sounds logically sound, but I do not want to talk about how Mei would have killed everyone today.”  
  
Ana and Mercy were forced into a standoff, eyes locked. And then Mercy transformed, and reached for her gun.  
  
* * *  
  
Angela Ziegler rammed her fingers down her throat. Fuck fuck fuck. She’d eaten way too much, way way too much, and she had to get rid of it before she poisoned herself. She didn’t want to be a fat pig, did she? You’ve seen so many people with health problems because they’re fat, you idiot. You have to do what you can to stop yourself from ending up like they did, the idiots. But you, Mercy, you have control. You just need to exert it, like those weaklings couldn’t. Stop eating more than a thousand a day, then turn it down by one hundred a weak until you alternate between five hundred and fasting. You can do that, right? Easy-peasy.  
  
Angela cried on the floor of the cubicle of the toilet at her internship. This was awful. She’d never wanted anything like this it was just that she couldn’t cope with being fat either. And after everything had got to her so much, she’d started compulsively eating, and, well, that shit’s not good for you. At all, in fact. She knew this, so she just found some way to control it. That’s fine, right? Yeah.  
  
Her eyes watered, a side effect of having he head forward for such a long time, and so she dabbed at them with a tissue until they returned to normal. Her teeth were yellow now, acid staining them after months of this, and her every breath felt like it was sand paper crawling down her throat. But she couldn’t stop. She was stuck and everything hurt so bad.  
  
She got home, and lay on her bed for a bit, scrolling through some thinspiration blogs. They all contained the same, underlying message: “If you just hold out long enough, you’ll look like this, and then your life will be perfect!” She wanted to believe them. She needed to believe them.  
  
She couldn’t believe them.  
  
A white cat appeared at her door, shadow larger than the lighting should lead to. Angels wasn’t perturbed, though. She didn’t care enough to be. Instead, she lay, paralysed with apathy and distaste. She didn’t even react when it began to talk.  
  
“Angela Ziegler! Please, make a wish with me and become a magical girl.”  
  
Angela didn’t respond, blonde hair lying messily on the pristine pillow, tears leaking from her eyes even if she didn’t feel sad enough to cry. Her red nails and matching lipstick made her think of blood, and how it had fallen from her lips earlier that day, mixed in with two magnums whose chill had swilled up her throat even after half an hour of body heat, a syrupy, thick slop with streaks of blood and chunks of chocolate.  
  
“You can wish for anything! Even to cure what currently plagues you!”  
  
“What about curing everything that anyone has if I lay my hands on them? Try making that wish come true.”  
  
“The contract is sealed!”  
  
Angela found herself levitating, as her soul – a grisly, sickly yellow – encapsulated itself in glass. She lay back into her bed, and placed her hands on her head, and felt the listlessness she’d had earlier disappear. But when she looked for the cat, she couldn’t find it.  
  
* * *  
  
At first, she chalked the event up as an illusion, or some sort of hallucination in her delusionary state. She stopped making herself sick, though, and her work was rapidly improving, now that she no longer felt like she wanted to jump off of her roof every morning. She was even starting to gain prowess among her peers, who previously rejected her whenever they could.  
  
* * *  
  
She’d cured someone with cancer, although it was written up as suddenly and mysteriously going into remission, the day after she had a session with the patient. She was becoming renowned as a miracle worker, and the hospital had already approved her working there after her internship.  
  
* * *  
  
She ran a ward now – the cancer ward. She let some of them die, those who were particularly old, at risk of dying anyway, and who were bad people. The world would be better off without them, right? And if no one died, they’d come under too much suspicion. They were above the average just enough to attract many high paying clients, but not enough to attract the government.  
  
* * *  
  
Witches were starting to show up at an alarming rate, drawn by the positive energy of the place, marking it as the most likely area to be hurt by their presence. She was killing them off fast enough, though. And their uptake of richer patients made an uptake in people who were nicer to her, desperate to have their every ailment cured by the hands of the resident angel of mercy. So, of course, she had had to start killing a few, wearing gloves whenever she touched them, just to be certain. Even the nice ones. She was just protecting herself, right?  
  
* * *  
  
She shot one of her co-workers. He had annoyed her for so very long, dogging her with questions about how she was curing so any terminal cases. So she shot him in the shoulder with her pistol, and placed her hands to the wound. It sealed over, and she winked at him. He changed workplaces the next day. He killed himself in a week, unable to come to terms to what he had seen.  
  
* * *  
  
Mercy shot two bullets, in rapid succession. One was a clean hit into Pharah’s soul gem, shattering it before she could react. Then she shot her own gem, and fell, limp, onto the floor.  
  
She was just protecting herself, right? After all, everyone here was too weak to not turn into witches. She’d protected them from herself and Pharah. You were so weak. So weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Warnings for body horror described, and heavy description of an eating disorder, taken in part from my own experiences, so it's pretty realistic, and thus could be harmful if you're struggling with one (Please stay strong!). I'm not going to tag this one in the main tags, because it will heavily spoil this chapter. If these topics hurt you, there is a summary below so you don't miss out on the plot. If someone wants, I can post the chapter parts which don't deal with the eating disorder, or the parts which don't deal with body horror, on my tumblr and link it here so that you gain as much as you can from this chapter! Also a warning for a mention of suicide.
> 
> Summary: Tracer and Ana kill Widow's witch, a spider, and during it Tracer becomes so hopeful as to enter a mode which is tho opposite of being a witch, although it is temporary, unlike being a witch. After this, Ana is accused by Mercy of hiding stuff from her, and then Mercy is revealed to have been bulimic and depressed and to have wished to cure anything and everything. The power warps her, and she starts to choose who can live and who can die, and eventually shoots a non ill person and heals him, which drives him to suicide. She then shoots herself and Pharah, which the chapter ends on.
> 
> This is the longest chapter yet, at over 4,500 words! That's also why it was posted a bit later in the day than usual. Also, we hit 30 kudos! Thanks guys!
> 
> I think my writing style is benefiting from the longer paragraphs I'm now writing. What do you all think?


	9. She'd Never Allow This To Change

Tracer screamed. Zarya gawped. D.Va fainted.  
  
Satya ignored. She stared at the two bodies, crumpled on the floor and decomposing at an irregular rate, far faster than normally possible. Skin aged rapidly and Satya saw the couple as they would have been if they were 50, 80, in their graves. Skin pulled taut as the bodies boated and greened with the methane gas which steadily built until a point at which the outer casing resembled a balloon, fit to burst. Just as Satya became certain that the skin would burst, the bodies burst into a purple stardust. Presumably, this had been the work of Ana, now that Satya could pull herself away from the unique sight and focus on the cause of it. This was new data, and it was only right for her to collect it, and expand upon it. If you know what is causing the problem it can be fixed, and everything had a cause, meaning that everything can be fixed.  
  
Her hands fiddled incessantly, her stim toys left in her room, architech’s pad insufficient to distract herself from the bodies’ sudden absence. She pulled on hair and repeated the song she had sung earlier, but it felt tainted, different. She fiddled with her shirt, and the texture soothed her a little. But then she thought of the bodies again, and tasted bile in her throat, and that wasn’t a nice taste. Not at all. Everything was suddenly overwhelming her, and Satya ran out of the room feeling the wind on her cheeks and the lights in the room far, far too strongly.  
  
If everything has a solution, couldn’t it be wished for?  
  
Ana watched Satya run out of the room, and couldn’t blame her. Her magic had dealt with the sudden mess, but it couldn’t deal with everyone’s reactions to it. So she compartmentalised her grief for her daughter and began to deal with the others, burying it as deep as Gabriel and Jack. Her anger at Mercy went further beyond that, matching that of Reaper. But she could still find herself wanting to forgive her, wanting to sympathise, even when there was nothing to sympathise with. The life of Angela Ziegler had gone up in a poof of magic a long time ago, and Mercy went with it today. Or maybe she was wrong! Maybe, making a wish doesn’t kill you, or destroy you, like she was pretending it did. Maybe the version of Angela Ziegler that was born from a contract was truer to herself than any other version there ever had been. Maybe the contract didn’t sacrifice freedom – it offered it.  
  
She shook her head, banishing the thoughts as best as she could, and got to work with the mess Angela had left behind. D.Va still lay on the ground, so she placed her in the recovery position with the aid of Zarya, who was moving hands roughly and sharply, trying to push the pain out through them. She gave Zarya’s hand a squeeze, and stared into her haggard face, filled with pain and longing. Zarya’s eyes watered for the first time since Ana had met her, and she gasped out “Is it true?”  
  
“Is what true?”  
  
“Don’t play games with me. Would Mei have reacted like,” She swallowed the word, forcing it down beneath “Like Mercy did? Would she have tried to kill everyone?”  
  
“I – I think so, yes.”  
  
“Are you lying? Because if I told you the woman you loved and mourned would have killed us _if she wasn’t dead already_ , I don’t think you’d do anything other than sleep dart me. Are you lying?”  
  
“You can ask Kyubey itself. It did the calculations, not me.”  
  
“Then maybe it was lying! It would not be the first time it lied, and it would not ignore this opportunity to disrupt the harmony of this group. In order for us all to turn into witches, it would need as much as discord in the group as possible, and I would find it likely it saw my grief as a way to try and hurt us. So I ask you again. Could it have lied?”  
  
“It is against my higher functions to lie. It would be physically impossible for any one of us to lie, as the ability was removed from the breeding pool many generations ago, in an attempt to ensure clear and effective communication between the hive mind.” The abomination had planted itself on the table. “In order to answer your question, it is very likely that Mei would have killed someone. Since your abilities make you effectively immune to her freezing spray, she would likely target D.Va first, as she has no way to prevent it and would have sat on her other side. Following or failing this, she would subsequently kill Mercy and then Pharah, before focusing on Tracer, who would ultimately beat her as you, yourself, would shield her. Or, at least, this is the most likely course of events. It is difficult to say for certain what would– ”  
  
“Why? Why would she... Do that?”  
  
“We neglect to mention what happens to magical girls for this reason. In approximately twenty per cent of the population, this is the most likely reaction to discovering what a witch is, as opposed to becoming a witch herself – in approximately forty per cent – or adapting to it by becoming less emotional – the remaining forty per cent. We would prefer that the majority of magical girls become witches – as it is more effective means of collecting energy – and so wherever possible, we nudge events so that the twenty per cent are unable to find this out, and die via witch instead. We do not know why they behave in this way. It defies all logic.”  
  
“What did you say just then? About... Collecting energy?” Tracer rushed in, before seeking Zarya’s eyes for a mouthed apology.  
  
“You should all be familiar with the concept of entropy, yes? It is a term your species have come up with from the subsect of science referred to as physics, or more specifically, the laws of thermodynamics. It is the thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. In other words, due to the degree of randomness in the universe, heat energy is slowly accumulated over other, more useful forms, until the point wherein the universe ends. This is because no source of energy is infinite – except for one. Emotions, bizarrely enough, contain a fundamentally limitless source of renewable energy. Sadly, recognising this as an aberration in the laws of physics, we have bred this out of our species a long time ago, and thus must rely on other races, such as humans, in order to fulfil the requirements of the universe to avoid the heat death.”  
  
“So you’re telling me that the reason why I can’t feel anything near as much as I used to feel, is because of this piece of shit contract?”  
  
“The contract itself is not responsible – rather, it is your soul gem. It feeds off of the emotional energy you supply it with, typically until such a point as you become a witch, at which point it takes all remaining energy and releases it in one go. The witch then accumulates further energy from the people killed by it.”  
  
“Ask it how much energy it needs from this planet.” Ana stepped in.  
  
“The energy of approximately one hundred billion average people would be necessary to collect, in order to counterbalance this galaxy’s contributions to the heat death of the universe. Currently, there are approximately fifteen billion people alive in the world, and we have already collected the energy of eighty five billion. Thus, when Schatten – or the witch resulting from the magical girl who defeats her – destroys this planet and absorbs all human emotion into her grief seed, we will be able to say we have fulfilled our quota, and leave this galaxy.”  
  
“One hundred billion?”  
  
“Your race is quite an emotive one. This is approximately one tenth of the count required from the average race, and half of that of the average race we harvest. It’s really a very effective solution – each galaxy is assigned an incubator, which searches for and finds the most emotive species, harvests emotions and moves onto the next galaxy. As the universe is infinitely large, it is impossible for us ever to be done, despite our ability to make infinite copies of ourselves. However, our calculations indicate that we have already halved the rate of decay of the universe. Whilst it is impossible to ever stop the heat death altogether, it is possible to slow it to a fraction of its rate of decay, considering our infinite number. Thus, the decay should be halted to one infinitieth (That is, one over infinity) of its natural rate, practically, but not theoretically, stopping the decay.”  
  
“Do you understand now? Do you understand why there isn’t any point in what Mercy did? Even if we were to kill everyone on this planet to prevent any other witches, we would simply move that thing onto a different planet, where it would repeat the cycle. Our race was condemned to death the moment it arrived here. _We_ were condemned to death the moment it arrived here. At the least, by making wishes and continuing down this path, we are stopping anything further happening to anyone else. Besides, this universe is infinitely vast. One day, there will be a world exactly like this, where exactly the same events play out, but the incubator never arrives. There, we can live out our lives in peace.”  
  
“Ana... Why do you sound like you’ve given in? It’s not over! Weren’t you telling me today how I can do anything? Surely there’s another way? And even if there isn’t, I’d rather die trying than spend my years hiding from the truth, trying to ignore everything that’s going on around me!”  
  
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Ana loomed over Tracer, her eyes filling with tears “I was part of the fist omnic crisis! I watched as everyone in my team died in front of me and I was the only one left! Schatten is the same witch who caused the first omnic crisis and I still haven’t destroyed her! Do you think I don’t care? I spend every waking moment thinking over how I could have done something different to how I did it, and how I could have saved people if I had just made a wish earlier, if I had just tried harder. We are stuck! There’s no way out of this shitty mess! We’re all going to have to fight witches until the day we day, if we even can die. I’m trying every single day to try and save this team, but I can’t even save the team with my own daughter in it. My own fucking daughter was killed in front of my eyes not even an hour ago, and you have the sheer audacity to ask if I care, to try and say that I don’t? You know what? Do you care, Tracer? Do you care that I have had more teams than I can count, sometimes as many as two at a time, and they always end up this same fucking way! We have a year or two of calm, and then someone dies, or straight up turns into a witch, and two weeks later I’m on my own again. I am trying so damn hard and there is still nothing I can do! I hate this! I hate this more than you ever will because you’re just on this ride for the next couple of days, until Schatten gets here and we all die anyway, and I’ve been stuck on it for forty fucking years. Fuck you, Tracer! Fuck you.”  
  
Ana stormed out of the room, tears falling into the hallway behind her, holding a grief seed to her stone, feeling as it got closer to turning black. Fucking idiot. Did she really not care that much? How could she say something like that, to her teammate? You fucking idiot, Ana. Now what are you going to do? Master chess player, acting like you’ve got them all on strings, trying to organise this team, trying to ignore the faults within our own group and yet you can’t shut your fucking trap and get on with it. Do what needs to be done, Ana! Do what needs to be done!  
  
* * *  
  
Paper scrunched. Graphite snapped. Satya sighed. Did she really know what she was doing?  
  
She heard the others talking and then shouting, before shoving her headphones on and trying to blank it out. But one of them went further into her ears than the other, and she had to take them off, the different too uncomfortable. She heard what the monster said, about how they were sources of energy, but then latched onto what they were saying, and suddenly she was thrown into her work again. Architech work was complicated, and didn’t make sense a lot of the time unless you knew exactly what you were doing – which Satya did. You had to design the item, and then iterate upon the design whilst making it, creating the item and then moving it with your hands until it was poised just so. Then you pulled on the strings, the beams of light and suddenly the object was in front of you.  
  
But she couldn’t get past the first step. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the design to work –the smallest parts of it far, far too nuanced for something as bulky and imprecise as her portable projector to capture. And how would it work, anyway? How could she shift matter like that, capture it in light to somehow move it somewhere else? It simply couldn’t be possible.  
  
Her door opened of its own volition, as it seemed to have a penchant for. It refused to allow her any privacy whenever she wanted it. She sighed, the sounds of the argument getting louder until she caught what the others were saying. Was Ana okay? She recognised how bad she was at empathising with people but felt she should, at least, give it a go. She was putting on her socks as she prepared to get up – the texture of the carpet in her room was different to that of the hallway, and she didn’t like the hallway’s one – but was confronted by an incubator.  
  
“Sorry to interrupt your work, Satya! Is there anything I can do to help?”  
  
Satya eyes it, untrustingly. She picked it up, ignoring the thing’s protests as she tried to place it in the hall, but Zarya saw what she was doing and came over from where D.Va was waking.  
  
“Is it bothering you, Satya? I would be more than happy to deal with it, for you.”  
  
“I’m not bothering her! I’m offering to help!”  
  
“By doing what, huh? You are trying to make her contract, I think.”  
  
“That’s all I can do to help!”  
  
“Out.”  
  
Zarya pulled the cat out of Satya’s hands and walked back over, dropping it into the lift and sending it to the ground floor before it could scrabble back out. Zarya went back to Satya, only to find her door closed with a piece of paper hastily taped to it, reading “WORKING – DO NOT DISTURB” and, in smaller text, “Please check on Ana for me.”  
  
Zarya plodded to Ana’s room and knocked on the door, expecting a response but getting none. She stood outside of Satya’s door and told her about it, getting no response in return, and so she headed back to Tracer and D.Va. Tracer had fixed D.Va up with a mug of hot chocolate, and had one for herself.  
  
“Are you okay Tracer?”  
  
“I’m feeling a bit better, thanks.” Her arms were shaking, her teeth chattering as if she had been through an adrenaline rush. “Sorry I went mute for a bit there. I wasn’t up to dealing with that.”  
  
“It’s okay. I’ve never seen Ana like that before either – I’m sorry that has happened to you. Is there anything I can do to help?”  
  
“No, thank you. I might go to bed now, though. It’s like, four in the morning.”  
  
“Yeah. We could all use some sleep.”  
  
They left D.Va on the sofa, leaving it up to her whether she played or slept, and each headed to their own rooms, separate until morning.  
  
* * *  
  
Zarya started the following morning, or rather afternoon, with a protein shake, before moving onto D.Va and dealing with her. She didn’t want to get up, though, so she carried her to her dusty bedroom, which never seemed to get any use in favour of her sofa. Was it really her sofa? Zarya supposed so, since no one else used it as much as D.Va.  
  
She then headed to Tracer’s room, but heard the shower running, and left her alone. Satya hadn’t slept, it seemed. Dark circles began to show up under her eyes, and the recycling bin was filled with drawing after drawing of some hardlight construction.  
  
“Satya, darling, get some sleep.”  
  
She whipped round at Zarya’s intrusion, and shooed her out of the room, closing the door on her like she didn’t want to have to bother with her. Zarya sighed, before moving onto the last room. She opened the door with trepidation; after yesterday she didn’t want to get in Ana’s way. But instead she found Ana awake and... Getting dressed.  
  
“Out! Zarya, I may be an elderly woman but unless you leave right now, I will file for sexual assault. I mean it!”  
  
She laughed as the door was shut behind her. Maybe everything was as close to normal as it was going to get. Maybe nothing else would change from here. Or at the least, Zarya told herself, she would never allow this to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I had to reread my first chapter for parts of this and has my writing improved or what? Thanks for sticking through with me, as this fic has gone from below mediocre to something I'm actually proud of!
> 
> Had a breakdown yesterday and I kept ignoring this all week, so this whole chapter was written today! Yay me (Kinda).
> 
> Ana was nearly killed off this week, but that goes against my core principle - that this all means something. Ana dying right now would have just been shock factor. Be Grateful. Also, that's why the ending of this chapter probably jars a little with the rest of the chapter.
> 
> As of right now, I'm opening suggestions (Which I am more than liable to ignore) for waht I write once this thing is finished, but they must fit at least some of my criteria:  
> -I must know and like the subject matter. Obviously, Overwatch and PMMM, but I'm also a big fan of (Among other stuff) Dangan ronpa (I fully realise how trashy it is but I am Trapped), Pokemon (IDK how I'd write a fic for that but I could try), Steven Universe (Although I'm more meh on that these days so I might not accept anything for that). Don't worry about this one too much - if I don't know something, I'll let you know, not tell you off or anything! And I'd like to keep the audience I have now, hence why I' opening this up!  
> -I'm gonna shove a lesbian relationship, regardless  
> -No NSFW  
> -I have a heavy bias towards slower stuff/series works and sad stuff as opposed to happy one-offs
> 
> Have fun suggesting stuff, I hope?


	10. There's No One To Rely On Anymore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the break! Last week was overwhelming, and I didn't get anything done.

Ana Amari woke up. Her hair was a mess, and so she reached for her bedside brush as she dealt with the alarm ringing on her phone. Her background – a picture of herself, Gabe and Jack – smiled at her, Jack’s mischievous grin as bright as ever, Gabe’s menacing smirk languid. Her own smile was youthful, filled with the promises of a brighter tomorrow she had spoken. The tone of the alarm continued to beep, even as she got lost in the picture during her morning haze. She dismissed it, and got to work on her hair, the previous night’s knots and tension worked out smoothly and swiftly. She took a moment to appreciate the view from the apartment window, before she went back to work, her focus only slightly slipping.  
  
In her younger days she would have worn her hijab, the cornflower blue catching her eye in the corner of the room, but she wasn’t sure if Allah was for her anymore. She had seen things, both terrible and horrific, which called into question whether Allah existed. So she had made the choice not to wear it anymore, until the day when she felt that she wanted to wear it again.  
  
Her door gave way with a slight pull, and so she found herself inside the dining room. Liao was already up, her muscles glinting with a sheen of sweat from some workout. She downed her protein coffee, swallowing two tablets with it. Her HRT was yet to kick in on her breasts, but as everyone told her, it will. She’d only been on oestrogen for about a month, having wished to make it happen despite her financial situation.  
  
Adawe was reading. Despite moving faster than anyone else alive, she refused to let that change how she spent her time. So she forced herself to read slowly, turning the page and enjoying the time she took to do so. She may not be a member of the UN anymore, but Adawe refused to let anything make herself change.  
  
Steadfast and strong. If Ana had to describe Adawe as anything, it would be that. She was so glad that she didn’t have to take on the role that Adawe had. Clearly the leader of their group, her moral compass was steadfast, her head was strong, and her physique was solid. If they lost her, the group would probably fall at its knees.  
  
Speaking of which, she was yet to see the last person. She flung her arms around wildly, but she still got past them.  
  
“Boop!” Sombra appeared out of thin air, and she giggled. “Oh, pobrecita! Don’t look so sad!”  
  
Ana glared at Sombra as she made her way towards the kettle. “Tea?” Sombra made a noise like a cat couching up a hairball, and Ana took that for a no. Adawe spoke up though, in a voice like that of a far off storm.  
  
“Make some coffee, Ana. No one else drinks that weak shit.”  
  
Ana shrugged, and made Adawe a cup of instant as her own cup of herbal brewed. She carried it over to Adawe, who nodded her thanks. Predictably, her herbal cup floated in front of her eyes conveniently at the same height as Sombra’s hands. Ana heard giggling as the cup was poured down the drain.  
  
“At least drink it, you asshole!”  
  
* * *  
  
Ana walked back to her room, a replacement cup of tea in her hand. The others had left on a witch hunt, and Ana didn’t want to come with them. There weren’t a lot of witches left she hadn’t seen, in her month long tenure at the apartment, and she wasn’t a magical girl, so she wasn’t exactly pushed to go hunting all the time. She lay in bed and weighed up all the options she had – she could read, watch trashy Netflix, play a video game... The opportunities may as well be endless.  
  
Ana sighed and opened up her phone, fingerprint registering quickly and smoothly. Gabe and Jack smiled at her again as she pressed her finger onto the play button for her music, and then the Kindle app. Reading it was.  
  
* * *  
  
A grand stage unfurled before Sombra’s eyes. Elephants of every colour known to humankind marched onwards, stomping on even the other minions. From behind them, bunting streamed into the sky, and the whole procession marched towards Sombra. The clouds covered the witch, but she could feel her presence, heavy and thick, as if there was a great fog.  
  
5  
  
This was no normal witch. In front of her, a curtain pulled apart, and a lace doily rose with it. The bunting’s attachments revealed themselves, attaching to a witch who floated through the air, laughing. She watched, powerless, as a hospital simply disappeared, replace with a stage. Buildings around her grew taller without reason, trying to form the walls of the stage, only to be stampeded by the herd of elephants.  
  
4  
  
More creatures arrived, all nonsensical and brightly coloured. They looked like a child’s experiment gone wrong, a creation of life so nonsensical and bizarre that it should have simply folded in on itself. But the magic sustained it, and Sombra watched as creatures with arms for eyelashes and mouths for irises marched alongside a pink elephant, which resembled a stuffed toy.  
  
3  
  
Sombra’s eyes met the form of the witch, watching the gears which made up its body spin and turn as sparks of magic bounced off of them. Everything the sparks touched became a different colour, and suddenly that, too, was a part of the stage. There was no order to this madness. Every building that Sombra could see was changing, or lifting into the air and catching fire.  
  
2  
  
Adawe and Liao lay at her feet, dead. The arrival had killed them, talking to her one moment, the next on the floor, writhing. Their soul gems went black, and then became grief seeds, before exploding. Darkness poured out of them, and became the figures of the people they had once been. Then they giggled, and flew up to where the bunting left, now minions of the witch.  
  
1  
  
The air around Walpurgisnacht shimmered and changed, distorting the very air. She cackled, and the silhouettes of thousand of magical girls were let loose from within the gears into the world. Everything they touched was distorted as if Walpurgis herself had touched it, and soon the majority of the town was part of the stage.  
  
0  
  
Sombra translocated.  
  
* * *  
  
Ana hummed along to the music, and didn’t see the word outside her room change and distort. She didn’t see the figures of person after person raise into the air and contort, returning to the ground a mess of genetics and reality. She read a tale of fictional nightmares as an incredibly real one happened outside her window.  
  
Sombra appeared in the kitchen, and ran to Ana’s room. “Ana! Are you okay?”  
  
Ana pulled out a headphone, and looked up from her bed. Outside, the world was warping, and ending. She gasped, filled with the kind of fear which she would feel countless times in her life.  
  
“There isn’t time to be scared, Ana. Liao and Gabrielle are dead, and there’s no way I can take on that witch by myself.” Sombra gripped onto Ana’s shoulders and held her close.  
  
“Take it on? Are you insane? It’s the end of times! Judgement day! Of all the days not to wear my hijab, did it have to be the one where the clothes I wear are what Allah will judge me in?” Ana’s fingers shook, tears falling as she tried to make sense of the situation, and failed.  
  
“Ana, stop trying to make jokes! You have to make a contract, now! Please! There’s no one else as powerful as you are in this whole city, and even if there was, she’s probably dead. You have to help me!”  
  
Kyubey opened the door somehow, and got into the room. “Ana Amari! I want you to make a contract with me, and be-”  
  
“Kyubey, do we have any chance?”  
  
“Yes! But there’s no time to waste for your contract!”  
  
“Then I wish to save people from the damage a witch causes.”  
  
“The contract is sealed! Now, show them your strength!”  
  
* * *  
  
Sombra was running as fast as she ever had, pelting the witch. She felt Ana’s magic coursing through her veins as she slowly took apart the machinations of Walpurgisnacht. A cog fell off, and hit the ground with the force of something much larger than it.  
  
Ana felt the shockwaves from a great distance, as she repeatedly topped up Sombra’s health, and hit her with nanoboost after nanoboost. Occasionally, she hit the behemoth with a sleep dart, in an attempt to send it to sleep, but it only slowed the monster.  
  
Sombra tried to hack the witch, but it simply laughed louder. It worked out where she was, and the cog she stood on revolved in the opposite direction at twice the speed. She hit it with yet more fire, and translocated, before turning invisible. Then she worked to get rid of the witch’s face, the billowing sheet covering it dropping, and turning all of the buildings it smothered into yet more creations.  
  
“She’s going to turn the whole world into her stage!” Ana shouted to Sombra. “There’s nothing we can do to stop her!”  
  
* * *  
  
░░░░░░ looked around her bedroom. Eyes flashed on her computer, and then began to move, searching for her. She hid in the corner of her room, but then the eyes began to climb the walls, the ceilings – anything they could, if it would mean getting one step closer to her. Physics had been hacked.  
  
She lay there, fearful, as the witch’s barrier opened up around her. How could a virus get on her computer, let alone come off of it into her room? She thought she had some of the tightest security in the world – because if you’re going to try and hack the planet, you should expect the planet to hack back.  
  
░░░░░░ searched her surroundings, fearful that the eyes may have found her. But what appeared before her was not her bedroom wall. Some kind of purple construct was behind her, with no indication as to how it got there, covered in the same eye symbol. They flickered and moved, and occasionally the wall distorted as the eyelashes became teeth, and it bit the air around ░░░░░░. It was hungry.  
  
Only one exit was available to her, so she took it, her purple-black hair shaking with her shoulders. It led out into a corridor, again covered in the eye. But now the floor tried to eat her, too, and ░░░░░░ found herself panicking more frequently as they got closer to working out where she was. For eyes, they were rather blind. The pupils didn’t even follow her around the room! Their erratic movements made it look like they were exploring their surroundings, trying to work out where they were as much as she was.  
  
░░░░░░ pressed on, being led down more and more corridors and through room after room, each with only one exit, each with no entrance. The wall slithered up to hide the entrance as soon as she went through each one, slowly trapping her deeper and deeper in the complex. The eyes only grew in number and agitations, and soon it became common to find two slithering over each other, their lashes-turned-maws fighting over the same air, as if they were completely unseeing. The erratic movements were, upon closer inspection, slightly less erratic. She found she could start to predict where and when the eyes would try to bite her, and so she started to toy with them. It was better than just walking endlessly with no interruptions.  
  
Eventually, ░░░░░░ found herself in the heart of the labyrinth. Here, the eyes were gone, replaced by arms which clawed and ripped, aiming for her head. She shrieked as she ducked, and dodged another arm which swung for her. She ran from the wall, into the centre of the room, where the ground rumbled beneath her feet. Instinctively, she ran away from the centre, and into a pair of arms, which failed to hurt her. Were they just holograms? There to scare her?  
  
The largest eye ░░░░░░ had come across so far closed its gaping jaw in the centre of the room and turned its pupil towards her. She stared it down, and punched it. If the arms weren’t real, this probably wasn’t either. Right?  
  
Wrong. It tried to eat her arm as she hit the suddenly-very-real eye, and she jumped back. Into the way of – a white cat?  
  
She shrieked again, and it giggled without moving its mouth. Its eyes didn’t move either, but ░░░░░░ didn’t notice, used as she was to the unmoving pupils now.  
  
“░░░░░░! I want you to make a contract with me, and become a magical girl!”  
  
░░░░░░ didn’t have a chance to reply, as the eye came towards her again, trying to engulf everything she was.  
  
“If you want to destroy that, you’ll need to make a wish, and then become a magical girl!”  
  
░░░░░░ shouted “Why won’t you help me!”  
  
“I’m not allowed!” It watched, unblinkingly, as the eye cornered her in the circular room. Physics never seemed to be a problem in this labyrinth.  
  
░░░░░░ felt the blood drain from her face, and then got ready to disappear from this world, never to be seen again. And who would care? She was just yet another orphaned, useless girl. The world wouldn’t miss ░░░░░░. They wouldn’t even know her name.  
  
“I recommend you wish to get rid of this witch! Although, any wish will let you destroy this one. It’s rather weak. Any magical girl of any skill or power could destroy that.”  
  
Mexican poured out of her mouth as she heard the sinew of the mouth-maw stretch as it prepared to kill her. And then came a thought.  
  
“If magical girls can have different powers and skills, then I wish to be the most powerful one there ever was! I wish to be the most powerful magical girl, capable of destroying any one of these things!”  
  
Calculations were made in the hive-mind. A vote was taken, coming out as fifty-one per cent for, forty-nine against.  
  
“The contract is sealed!”  
  
* * *  
  
Sombra dropped her translocator, followed by herself. Inside the heart of Walpurgisnacht, gears spun faster than ever, and the wraiths of magical girl after magical girl lay, sleeping. She searched herself for a grief seed, but found none. She sighed. Was this really a fitting end for ░░░░░░?  
  
But ░░░░░░ had already died. And if Ana couldn’t do anything, and her hack didn’t work against it, there was only this left. She sent out the EMP in a pulse. The electricity in what was left of the city died, and Walpurgis dropped from the sky and somehow, miraculously, this was enough. The witch continued cackling, until she disappeared from existence.  
  
Sombra felt her soul gem explode, and a dark cloud covered the earth, for only a few seconds. In this time, every omnium reactivated and the newly born witch disappeared.  
  
Ana looked through the wreckage of her city. Was there anyone else left there? Was there anyone left in the world who knew Sombra’s real name? Ana came to the conclusion there wasn’t. There is no one to rely on anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, when I speak about Liao and Adawe, I'm assuming that they're the people on the furthest left and the furthest right in this picture from Ana's story video: http://www.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/original%20overwatch%20crew.jpg
> 
> Liao is trans because there's no reason Liao can't be a trans girl who's starting HRT and thus lacks breasts. It's also more convenient than having just Sombra and Ana as a team.
> 
> Watch this if the description of Walpurgisnacht's attack makes no sense! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S09mEDCqSx4
> 
> Anyway, I'm pretty sure my next fic will be a three chapter miniseries focusing on the Talon crew, and the angst waiting to be unpacked there. Might have a hint of Sombra/Widowmaker and Jack/Gabriel - still in the air.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	11. The Only Thing They Have Left To Guide Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took an extra week because:  
> -A lot of the scenes needed reworking, because they didn't flow as well as I would have liked  
> -My mental health just caved in completely last Monday  
> -I had eleven (!) exams this week. They were only mocks, but, like, still.
> 
> Enjoy, as always!

Ana laughed, sat on the sofa next to D.Va as she made some ridiculous comment about how her opponents were rubbish. She laid a protective arm around her, as Zarya and Tracer returned from hunting witches.  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Seventeen in all, but only eight grief seeds. The familiars are getting bolder.” Zarya responded, giving the seeds to Ana one by one as she took them out of her bag. Ana touched each one gently, and they disappeared with a purple shine, safely stored.  
  
“Thanks. D.Va, we have to move. We’re on shift now.”  
  
D.Va grumbled as the controller was eased out of her hands. “All we’ve been doing for over a week now is patrolling for witches, killing them, and then swapping out with the other two. It’s depressing as hell! Why won’t Schatten just show her ugly face so we can punch it? And why are our shifts so fucking long! Last time I spoke to Tracer was to get her to pass the salt.” She grumbled, but everyone felt what she was saying. D.Va opened her mouth to address the question no one was addressing, but thought better of it.  
  
“I know it’s boring to always talk to me, but it’s necessary. We have the most experience working together, and it’s not like any of us could work on our own! Not with the density of witches. Schatten is luring them like moths to a flame, and we are the only defence this city has left. If this place had no one, mass suicides would take place every hour. We are the only thing the people of this city have left to guide them.”  
  
“But shifts of twelve hours? Isn’t that taking it too far?”  
  
“You can take my place on the night shift anytime!” Tracer stretched and yawned. Zarya was on the verge of fainting; her head looked like it might fall off at any time.  
  
D.Va’s grumbling kept going, but Ana quieted her and sent her out of the door. She would have followed her, but Zarya cornered her before she could leave.  
  
“Is this sustainable?”  
  
All she needed to know was in Ana’s drooped shoulders.  
  
Zarya’s posture didn’t change. “You’ve seen this before. How long do we have until she’s here?”  
  
Ana stood, defeated. “Honestly? I think she’s already here. I think she’s waiting until we let our guard down. I think she wants us to feel what she’s been feeling for all these years.”  
  
* * *  
  
D.Va waited in the lobby, giving a nod to Chloe when she saw her. Her headphones were plugged in, and she watched as people walked by. One wore a pink hoodie, with ears sticking up. Her bag was pink, too, with “D.Va” written on the back in a darker pink.  
  
D.Va smiled, and watched as the teenager walked into the crowd. She thought she heard something beside her, but Chloe hadn’t moved, passive as ever. She gave D.Va a smile which clearly read “Please leave me alone”, and so D.Va was content to shrug, and move on. She left the building. To hell with what Ana said! She wasn’t going to spend her time hunting some good for nothing witch. She was going to find Schatten herself, and she was going to beat her fucking face into the fucking ground.  
  
She followed the hoodie, having no real plan for how she was going to find Schatten. But doing something, anything, was better than just waiting for Schatten to get there. Even if it was the wrong thing to do, she’d take the wrong thing over nothing. The long ears poked out above the crowd, and so she was easy to follow, and follow her D.Va did. She found herself in a part of town she had never seen before, one where the shadows were longer then they should be this early in the morning, but she carried on anyway.  
  
And soon D.Va was ignoring how people had stopped appearing. The shadows got longer and longer, but she didn’t care. She followed the hood further and further, and then the girl turned around.  
  
“Hana Song! I’m such a big fan!”  
  
D.Va beamed her brightest smile, and came over to the teen. “And I’m yours, too! Do you want me to sign something?”  
  
“Of course!” She provided D.Va with a notebook, and she signed dutifully.  
  
“Okay, then! Always nice to hear from an adoring fan!”  
  
“An adoring fan? You make it sound like there’s loads of us!”  
  
“There are, duh! I mean, I know I stopped posting ages back, but that doesn’t make me any less popular!”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hana. I mean, you’re cute and all, but you’re hardly a megastar. You got like, two hundred views? On your best video? I mean, you’re a great person, and you deserve more views, but you probably won’t ever get them. I dunno. Maybe people just find you boring, and rubbish to watch!”  
  
The girl laughed, and D.Va frantically checked her phone. The girl was right? How could this be? She wished to be famous the world over, and Kyubey had granted that wish and then some. She. She didn’t. Understand.  
  
The girl’s laugh grew louder and louder, and D.Va panic got bigger and bigger. No one cared about her. No one knew who she was. She was. She was. She was nothing. She was a nuisance. She was useless. She wasn’t amounting to anything. She needed to move on. She needed to die.  
  
The girl handed her a knife, still laughing. D.Va pulled her soul gem out of her pocket, moving slowly, brain still trying to tell her she didn’t want to do this. She reached for the knife, and she stabbed her soul gem. It didn’t react, no scratch. The blade, darker than it should be, morphed in her hand into a gun. She didn’t care. She just felt this sudden desire to end everything. Like nothing mattered.  
  
She shot her gem, and it filled with shadow, and D.Va was no more.  
  
* * *  
  
Tracer collapsed into bed, and slept. She was too tired, the night shift having worn her out. So she slept.  
  
When she woke, her room was darker than it should be. She opened the curtains, but everything outside was dark too. It must be night again, and there must be a cloud covering the night sky. She glanced at the clock to confirm her suspicions, and it told her about ten hours had passed. She heard a nagging voice tell her that she should have been woken up by Ana, and be on a patrol, but then she heard something.  
  
“Chérie?”  
  
Tracer gasped. She knew that Widowmaker was gone but maybe there was a chance! She found herself walking towards the door, unconsciously, and opened it. Outside, the hallway was dark as night, and she looked for Widowmaker. She couldn’t see anything of her, and walked blindly.]  
  
“Chérie?”  
  
She turned, quickly, and walked past where her room was. She couldn’t see the door, but she ignored every sign in her which told her that she should be walking back to it. She walked on and on, unendingly, and eventually she heard Widowmaker again.  
  
“Chérie!”  
  
She turned again, not questioning why Widowmaker was behind her, and found her mangled shell of a body. She remembered how it had looked on the balcony, the stretching of the jaw as the spider climbed free, how the skin gave way in every wrong place to a creature thousands of times worse.  
  
“Why didn’t you... Help me?”  
  
Tracer cried in front of Widowmaker, watching as the woman she loved bled from some wound inside the flaps of skin which were all that remained. The skin pulled again, and suddenly a second arachnid was being born from the mess inside of her, poking through Widowmaker’s open mouth and pushing until the skin gave way. Widowmaker lay, weeping, on the floor as her body was pulled apart, and then she stopped crying. Her face had split in two, and the spider’s leg reached for Tracer.  
  
“You could have... Saved me...”  
  
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m Sorry! I should have helped more! I just wanted to help, I promise!”  
  
“You were useless... You... Killed me...”  
  
“I’m sorry I’m so useless! I don’t know what to do!”  
  
“Return... The favour...”  
  
“What?”  
  
One of the arachnid’s limbs pressed on Tracer’s chest, the pressure slowly building up.  
  
“Let me... Kill you...”  
  
Tracer swallowed, and looked at the limb. She felt something inside of her call out to her to stop the limb, but she just let it pierce through her soul gem, and Tracer was no more.  
  
* * *  
  
Zarya knocked on Tracer’s door, firmly. “Tracer? Ana can’t find D.Va. You need to come and help us.”  
  
No response. She knocked again, more harshly, but still nothing happened. She sighed, and walked back into the kitchen, expecting to find Ana. Instead, she found Mei sat on the table, unmoving. Her face had a slight sheen of blue, ice crystals covering every inch of it. Her whole body was the same; the crystalline shards that coated her reflecting light weirdly, making her look darker than she should have been under the light. She wore clothes marked “Antarctic expedition”, which Zarya had never seen before. She thought she had seen everything of Mei’s before.  
  
“Mei!”  
  
She ran over to her side, fearful for her health. She felt her face, and her hand recoiled from the cold feeling. The ice smothering her face had come off slightly with her hand, and so she wiped her hand on the table. The ice remained as cold as when she had first touched it, refusing to melt even when separated from Mei and her frozen body. The shards piled up in front of Mei on the table, reflecting different sections of her crystalline body – her translucent eyes, abandoned by the ecologist’s shining mind; her frosty hands, the warmth Zarya had grown accustomed to forever absent; her ice-covered heart, the quondam partner’s promises of love and affection unfilled.  
  
And as the shards piled up, they slowly morphed into one flat sheet, and Zarya found herself condemned to looking into it. She saw her village as it had been, the night before she contracted to save it. No one was on the streets, rumours about the omnium moving faster than the omnium itself. She watched, frozen, as a witch opened her labyrinth outside the house of a newlywed couple. The two men had married only that day: Zarya could see the “Just married!” sticker on the back of their car. The witch’s magic expelled a cloud of pink candyfloss, and the partners were taken into the labyrinth. They were not alone on that evening. Originally, the headlines for that fateful day had talked about little other than the sudden string of disappearances in the otherwise quiet town (Although discussion of the omnium fast overtook that).  
  
“Why didn’t you save them?”  
  
Mei had defrosted as Zarya had been trapped watching the destruction of her town, the glasslike ice soon moving to the sights of the march of the omnics upon her home. People died, quickly, slowly, averagely. Each seemed to turn their faces towards Zarya at the last moment, accosting her with different shades of hatred, grief and pity.  
  
“Did their lives mean nothing to you?”  
  
Zarya watched as she defeated the omnics near singlehandedly, people triumphing at their victory. But then the screen became filled with static, before showing an entirely different course of events. No rescue came for the town. People were slaughtered in the streets, and then the image cut to Zarya winning gold. She stood on the Olympic podium, medal held high, and around her the crowd cheered.  
  
“What is this? This did not happen! Mei! What are you doing?”  
  
“Why didn’t you... Save me?”  
  
Zarya felt frost cover her feet and legs, inching up as eyes swivelled to the screen again. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Her whole world was Mei – growing up, before her Antarctic expedition, her contract – her year of wandering through her town. Then she saw her and Mei meeting, and then the events which led to the day she died. She watched herself watching as Mei tried to stop the witch, but she died in the same way as she already had. The frost had engulfed her torso and chest, and arched fingers up her neck. Zarya croaked, as she breathed her last.  
  
“I’m sorry, M-”  
  
The ice covered her head to toe, and the Mei on the table shattered, along with Zarya.  
  
* * *  
  
Ana stood, transfixed, as Schatten deigned to speak to her. A mass of shadow, it had spread through the city like wildfire does to a dry forest. And then it struck. People marched off of buildings, nurses cut life support, and children took knives to their parents’ throats. Ana had been forced to watch each of the lives in her city be snuffed out, and then those of her team. She had stopped crying a while back, tear duct dried.  
  
“Why are you doing this to me? Why not just kill me?”  
  
The witch played snippets of others laughter, in place of having her own. And then she stabbed Ana through the chest, from a blade made of shadow. Ana found herself thinking of everyone she had seen die over the last month – Mei, and then Widowmaker, and then her daughter and her lover. And now, D.Va and Tracer and Zarya.  
  
She tried to speak, to react, to protest how her carcass hung as limp as a ragdoll, but blood gurgled out of her mouth before she could say anything. Had she spoken, however, one could have heard “Satya...”  
  
* * *  
  
Satya kept working. She hadn’t slept for a while now, but the design wasn’t complete. There was no time left, no time at all. She’d run the calculations – Schatten would be here any second, at which point either the device was finished or it wasn’t. Either way, she had no choice but to keep working until that second arrived. She downed the latest cup of coffee and winced at its bitter taste. Bitter wasn’t a good taste. She gave herself a moment to be disgusted, and then returned to the design.  
  
Where were the others? She hadn’t seen them for days, but then she got led back to building the teleporter. Eventually she would fix it. She shook herself out of her thoughts, and back to the design. Iteration upon iteration, and yet none of them worked.  
  
“Satya Vaswani! I want you to make a contract with me and become a magical girl!”  
  
“Fuck off Kyubey. Don’t you have something else to deal with?”  
  
“Everyone else in this city is dead.”  
  
Satya dropped her notepad.  
  
“How?”  
  
“Schatten has arrived! If you do not make a wish now, you will most likely be destroyed as well, at which point it is likely this world and subsequently galaxy will be eaten. Please, make a contract immediately!”  
  
Satya breathed. If she was going to die either way, she may as well do so in a way that was meaningful.  
  
“If this is trued – if I am the only thing they have left to rely on – I wish to have the power to save my team. That is all.”  
  
Satya felt her soul leave her body and then return next o her, in a gem which glowed a brilliant gold. Symmetra watched as Kyubey was eaten by his own shadow, and then stepped through her teleporter, hardlight construct finally perfected. She teleported across galaxies, jumping to a world the other side of the universe. A world exactly like her own - one month ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought that whilst Homura's time jumping was cool and all, having this whole idea of Symmetra jumping between galaxies to find the right world/timeline adds to the whole thing of how PMMM isn't just about the girls - it's also partially about how futile we can all be in the face of a danger so vast we can't comprehend it (E.g: Walpurgisnacht, Homura and timelines, the incubators or even entropy itself). Having Symmetra therefore travel in space and not time adds something to this whole idea, I think, whilst still achieving what time travel did for the main series.
> 
> The scenes needed reworking because of how drastically different each of the deaths were, and at one point I even had Schatten talking - which just didn't work. At all. 
> 
> She's called Schatten because Walpurgisnacht is German, and as Sombra is Spanish for shadow, I thought it might be fitting to have her witch be the German for shadow.
> 
> Do you remember when I said to expect a higher death density a few chapters back? This was the chapter I was thinking of! Love you guys too.
> 
> As always, reading is appreciated, kudos more so, and comments are worth their tiny little pixel weights in gold. My tumblr is in my user description, if you want that (Which I'm hoping you do, since you've stuck with me for eleven chapters now!).
> 
> See you next week, for the final chapter! (Plus a possible bonus one after that - we'll see!).


	12. I Am The Very Worst Of Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, folks. I hope you've enjoyed this, and I hope you can all forgive me for my irregular posting. To be fair, this chapter is twice the usual length, so I figure that might make up for being eleven days later than it was meant to.

Symmetra had to steel herself as she stepped into the lift. She was going to see them all again – Mei, Widowmaker, Pharah, Mercy – for the first time. And they wouldn’t know anything about her.  
  
She’d broken down in tears after she went through the teleporter. On the other side was something which looked like Kyubey, but which had named itself Kyuubey. It told her that it was expecting her (Symmetra figured the hive mind they ran on explained everything), and explained the situation she was in; each time she cheated death, the Incubator for that galaxy would be there to meet her, tell her where in the timeline she was, and then leave her to get started. Satya Vaswani would die from a carefully arranged accident, apparently, so there was no need to worry about having a doppelganger running around. All this time, Kyuubey had been as intimidatingly passive as Kyubey was before – the feeling that it wouldn’t care if she died made her feel as if she was disposable.  
  
And despite her feelings, she knew the truth: she was disposable.  
  
The elevator rose, and Symmetra’s spirits dropped. She still didn’t know what she was going to do about Widowmaker. Should she tell everyone? Or would that simply hurt things more than it would otherwise? Then was it best to tell her in private? But if she did that, would Widowmaker be able to trust her? She didn’t know her combat capabilities, so could she win against a sniper with months of experience?  
  
Kyuubey had mentioned about her immense potential – one which rivalled that of Schatten before she contracted. Apparently, it was due to how she would influence multiple timelines whilst remaining the same individual, and so she had an impossible influence, leading to an impossible power.  
  
Symmetra didn’t care. She had a job to do.  
  
And so when the elevator arrived, Symmetra not knowing for whom the bell tolls (Her, or the people whose lives she was going to change?), she swallowed everything she could and strode in, as confident as she had been on the first day she had met everyone else.  
  
* * *  
  
The day went almost the same as before, sans Symmetra’s harsh greeting when she arrived. Instead, she settled into an easy, if tense, conversation with Widowmaker. Lena was late again, and Mei arrived with shopping the same as before. Unprompted, Symmetra asked Ana to make her some tea, and Pharah got Widowmaker’s coffee as before.  
  
The rest of the day was relatively calm. Symmetra took Ana to the side at one point, and explained that she had already contracted. Ana’s mouth narrowed, and she opened her mouth to speak, but Symmetra cut her off.  
  
“I know about witches – what they really are. I made this choice for myself; please do not worry for me.”  
  
Leaving Ana speechless brought a smile to her face, and then Symmetra left for the lift, where everyone else was packed together. Ana was fuming, of course, and wanted to talk to her properly, but Symmetra hid herself among the others, slipping between Pharah and Mercy’s discussion of budgets, dry and yet filled with a domestic love; to Widowmaker and Lena’s flirting, unsteady and uncertain but filled with promise; to Mei and Zarya’s playful conversation, punctuated by kisses.  
  
D.Va and Ana spoke in low tones after they left the elevator, and D.Va came up to her a little while later to ask her how she was contracted. In response, Symmetra smiled and asked what she had wished for. Of course, D.Va didn’t respond, and Symmetra felt her point her been made.  
  
Mei watched the trio of newcomers, and expected them to go through the stages she had when she first entered a labyrinth. But one of them – Satya, she thought she was called – didn’t react at all. She just waited for everyone to finish gasping in awe, before moving into the labyrinth with everyone else.  
  
“Zarya, what do you think of the newcomers? That one there in particular?” Mei turned to Zarya, and away from the group’s flank.  
  
“I do not know for sure. We are all still yet to meet them, to be fair!” Zarya smiled at Mei when she spoke, before going back to scanning for familiars.  
  
“Yeah, but I can’t help but feel like there is something off about that one! She barely blinked when she arrived here.”  
  
“We’ll see how this develops. It may be something, it may be nothing: but for all we know right now, she simply was detached when she arrived here.”  
  
Mei pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, but then there came shouts from the front and she was thrown into action.  
  
* * *  
  
When the blizzard arrived, Symmetra was ready. She had been waiting for it; keeping an eye on the tie so that the next time it came, she would be ready to respond at the exact moment it arrived.  
  
Like the previous day, little was different. Mei had been looking at her funny, but then again, Symmetra had been keeping an eye on her more than everyone else. She was next and first to die and so Symmetra had gone over what she could from the first time she died, and what she could do to stop it.  
  
When Kyuubey called out to them in their head, asking for backup from Mei or Zarya, Satya left the couple gobsmacked when she transformed.  
  
“I will deal with this threat.”  
  
She marched out of the labyrinth, and even with the cold biting into her, she smiled. How would they react? It was out of her hands now. Part of her felt liberated, not to have to worry about them, but then she felt the onset of fear, and she began to panic. What if they didn’t react properly? What if Ana was on her way, sleep dart ready to knock her out?  
  
She spun around, trying to see if she was behind her, but saw nothing. She spoke to Kyuubey wordlessly.  
  
“Are the others having a conversation about me?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Patch me in, but don’t let them hear me.”  
  
She heard Mei and how she panicked for her safety, unsure of how she would be able to cope on her own in the cold. Zarya was more level headed, and instead discussed their options for dealing with a potential new threat. Ana was in agreement with Zarya’s view; Symmetra should be seen as a potential threat until proven otherwise. Pharah and Mercy offered to follow her into the labyrinth, and recon on her abilities, but Ana sent D.Va instead.  
  
“Thank you, Kyuubey. I will take it from here.”  
  
She stalked into the labyrinth, and began her assault. She threw a barrier at the familiars, and followed it up with several rapid-fire orbs of light. They moved slowly, but they moved as an ensemble, and the familiars melted in the face of her beam. She jumped slightly to avoid their slow fire, but they weren’t much of a threat. She’d seen this all before.  
  
Symmetra eventually arrived at the heart of the labyrinth, only to hear D.Va’s boosters behind her. She constructed a chair and turned to face her.  
  
“Greetings, D.Va.”  
  
“Same to you. How come you didn’t tell anyone?”  
  
“Ana knew.”  
  
“Ana doesn’t count. She knew before you told her.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Symmetra’s face could have been the dictionary definition of shock.  
  
“She can sense contracts, and what everyone has contracted for – except for you. Don’t ask me how; it’s probably related to her wish like all of our stupid powers. But she told me she didn’t know yours, which doesn’t make sense, unless you didn’t make a contract with Kyuubey. So you tell me! What do you mean?”  
  
Symmetra spotted her fingers moving closer to her mech’s trigger, and breathed. She focused on the icy air that emanated for nowhere obvious, how it stung her but in a way that felt pleasant, breaking up the monotony of the otherwise emotionless shell she had been putting on. She focused on the glint on the M.E.K.A.’s armour, the magic rendering it spotless, a flawless husk which should have been covered in scars from every battle this child had been in. She focused on how the air had a slight salty scent, as if the water which was frozen was that of the sea. She focused on the taste of the salt, how it rolled in her mouth, how she could taste the tang of iron as well. She focused on the sound of nothing, how the labyrinth was so far removed from reality that sound simply ceased to exist.  
  
And Symmetra took a gamble.  
  
“I don’t know, is the honest answer. But if Ana can sense everyone’s contracts, what about Lacroix’s?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Lacroix, Amélie? She came here with me and Lena, except she’s also a contract. I don’t know why you’re so surprised – I thought Ana could sense all contracts!”  
  
Symmetra got Kyuubey to tap her into their feed again, and heard Ana and Mercy’s joint despair at learning what had happened. She kept a smirk to herself, afraid that smiling would give her away.  
  
“I don’t know what to do about that. Can we just kill the witch and be done here?”  
  
Symmetra breathed a sigh of relief, and disposed of her chair. “Of course. Are you ready?”  
  
D.Va nodded from inside her mech, and they went into the heart of the labyrinth.  
  
* * *  
  
Symmetra felt proud of herself – she’d stopped Mei’s death and Widowmaker’s crisis in one fell swoop. By preventing Mei’s death, she stopped everyone blaming the widow for it, which was what had had her ousted in the first place.  
  
But she had only stumbled out of the frying pan and into the freezer. Mei’s glare was withering, ready to strike at any time, and it did. Repeatedly. Mei did not trust either of the contracted duo – why not tell the others that they were contracted, and be more useful?  
  
Widowmaker, trying to protect herself, talked about her wish and what she’d done. Mei’s heart softened at that, but then the full force of her rage was turned on Symmetra, who had no easy explanation. She couldn’t say where she was from, or he would lose. She couldn’t not say where she was from, or she would lose. So she was stuck.  
  
Ana came to her aid. She explained to the others that she knew about Symmetra, and that Symmetra had simply been anxious about the reception of an already contracted person when she could tell the letter was to recruit people. Afterwards, Ana took Symmetra aside.  
  
“I don’t know who you are, or where you’re from, but you didn’t contract with Kyuubey, did you?”  
  
Symmetra shook her head.  
  
“Here’s the deal. You tell me what you’re doing, and I ask three questions now. Or, you leave this timeline. Got it?”  
  
Symmetra nodded.  
  
“Ok. Firstly, did you know me before you came here?”  
  
Another nod.  
  
“Speak up next time. Not all of us like conversations with a post. So, what did you do to help today?”  
  
Symmetra weighed up the pros and cons of telling the truth, as if this were some Vishkar training excersise.  
  
“I saved Mei’s life. Or, at least, she wasn’t killed by that witch.”  
  
Ana nodded this time. “Okay. Finally, what do you aim to do here?”  
  
“I’m here to try and save you all.”  
  
“Schatten?” Ana cocked her head and raised an eyebrow.  
  
“That’s what I think. At any rate, everyone who was still alive at that point disappeared, presumably becoming witches before the whole world was destroyed.”  
  
“Still alive? You mean other people died, not just Mei?”  
  
Symmetra smiled slyly. “You’ve had three questions, and it’s not going to help you to know the answer. Do you really think you could cope with knowing?”  
  
She inwardly cringed at herself after the smile. Was this the kind of person she was now, simply because she knew more than Ana? Had Ana always felt this way, whenever the topic of witches came up? Or was she just projecting?  
  
But then Ana shook her head, and the moment passed.  
  
* * *  
  
They settled into an uneasy rhythm, after the tumultuous day. The days were spent hunting witches and making a stockpile, Ana and Symmetra leading the group. Symmetra started to feel hope again, and found herself relaxing into the team. Even Mei warmed to her, despite the icy resistance that was sent her and Widowmaker’s way for the first few days. It was made of small things; not making tea, bumping into the two “by accident!”, forgetting to buy any of the tea and coffee each liked. But, as in all things, Ana intervened.  
  
“Mei! Why are you trying to get rid of Symmetra and Widowmaker?” Ana caught her in the hallway, as she tried to go to her room after a hunt.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She froze in the hallway, and turned to face Ana. “I mean, I forgot to buy their tea, but that’s not the same as trying to get rid of them! You know me, Ana. Would I really do something like that?”  
  
“Don’t lie to me. You don’t like them; fine. I can understand that. I can understand not trusting them, too – they kept something hidden form you, something that could have hurt you. But you can’t treat them badly just for existing! People are complex, Mei. They were wrong to hide something from you, but it’s not like you’re treating them any better right now. I’m not asking you to marry one of them, just not treat them as if talking to them is going to kill you.”  
  
Mei stopped treating them badly after that. No love was lost between them, but Symmetra didn’t have to perform some dance to get down the corridor past Mei without being tripped up, so she counted it as an improvement.  
  
And then the inevitable occurred.  
  
* * *  
  
Symmetra woke up, alarm clock playing Beethoven as she got herself ready. The kitchen was already filled with people when she got there, which made her step back at first.  
  
“You’re all up early. Is there any reason?”  
  
Lena opened her mouth to speak. Her eyes were red and Widowmaker was sat with her, arm pulling the smaller of the two closer as the widow’s eyes betrayed none of her fear. D.Va was playing something, but Symmetra had seen D.Va play enough to know that she wasn’t giving it her all. Her eyes lacked focus, the gaudy colours of the screen receiving no response from the glazed eyes. Mei’s usual icy stare hadn’t met her this morning; she was greeted instead by a helpless one, as Zarya paced behind her, eyebrows furrowed as her eyes were shut, a look of cold fury prevalent. Pharah was wrapped round Mercy, her eyes darting protectively over Mercy’s warm body. Mercy, of course, had her clinician’s stare, that of a person who know how long you have left to live.  
  
Ana’s gaze was dead.  
  
She rose to grab Symmetra, and dragged her down the corridor. As she was pulled out of the room, she glanced at the table, where the concealing glare of what had become Symmetra’s own, personal devil gave nothing away.  
  
“They know.” Ana hissed into her ear, and Symmetra flinched. “It told them this morning.”  
  
“About?” Symmetra felt her stomach tense, as if she were about to be punched.  
  
“About witches! What else would it be? If you want someone to fall into despair, there’s no better way than to tell someone that they have been killing people, and that I’ve lied to them.”  
  
Symmetra shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense. It didn’t do this before: why now?”  
  
“Before? What do you mean, before?”  
  
Symmetra froze with fear. “A slip of the tongue. I meant to say-”  
  
An icicle went through Ana’s head, skin splitting, bones crunching, carpet reddening.  
  
“Sorry!” Mei was weeping, but her face was smiling.  
  
“What? What are you doing?”  
  
“Hold still, okay? I’ll be able to save you in a minute!”  
  
Symmetra ran down the corridor, away from Mei. An icicle zoomed past her head, and she ducked to avoid more. The kitchen was littered with corpses, and Symmetra ran faster, climbing over Zarya’s dead carcass, past D.Va’s empty eyes, through Pharah and mercy’s embrace. She threw a shield behind her as she entered the lift and rode it to the ground floor, filling it with sentry turrets in case Mei somehow got into it. On the ground floor, she went through her pockets, searching for a grief seed. The lift started to climb again, and Symmetra positioned herself to make the teleporter. The lift climbed down again, and Symmetra pulled the hardlight construct’s strings.  
  
Both door to another galaxy and door to the lift opened at the same time. Symmetra met Mei’s eyes as she stepped through and subsequently destroyed the teleporter. They were filled with betrayal, and hatred, and scorn. Symmetra thought of Schatten, and how Mei couldn’t defeat her alone. She thought of the death she was condemning her to.  
  
And then she left her.  
  
* * *  
  
“Good evening Ana.”  
  
Ana was playing with D.Va, who couldn’t stop giggling. Presumably, Ana was doing badly and D.Va was covering for her; unless in this version of reality Ana was the one who was good at videogames. She presumed not; since the teleporter should have found a galaxy identical to her original, only a month behind.  
  
She looked up from the sofa. “Oh, hello there Satya! Of course we can talk. Is there something you wanted to clarify about wishes, or something?”  
  
Symmetra looked at D.Va, and decided the best option was to simply not bother moving her. “I hoped we could talk alone. Would you care for some tea, in my room?”  
  
“If that’s what would make you most comfortable. I tend to prefer-” She was cut short by Symmetra’s sharp voice.  
  
“Chamomile, with a drop of honey. If you would give me a moment.” She turned, ignoring the blatantly confused look Ana gave her.  
  
Symmetra made the tea, before turning back to D.Va and Ana. She was fairly certain they had been talking – no doubt to find the source of her tea knowledge – but didn’t have it in her to offer an explanation.  
  
“Shall we?”  
  
She carried a crystalline glass of sparkling water. The flavour was bearable – a feat in itself for any drink, Symmetra felt – but the texture of the bubbles, exploding and dancing on her tongue was what drew her to it.  
  
* * *  
  
Symmetra’s room was much the same as it had been, two months ago – sparse, unfurnished and lacking purpose. She hadn’t decided yet if she would use it as her primary living space as she had the first time, or branch out into the main room; to better keep an eye on everyone. Ana sipped her tea quietly. Symmetra made no move to sit, but Ana had sunk into her bed in the lack of a chair.  
  
Symmetra looked down at Ana, whose gaze fixated entirely on her cup. “Shall I do the questioning, or you?”  
  
“I thought you had called me here to ask me something.” Her eyes met Symmetra’s as the steam from the tea curled around her face. “You’re not going to tell me you brought me here on false pretences, are you?”  
  
“So you _will_ start the questioning. Excellent. I had not planned past asking you here, so the onus is now mostly on you, I believe. In answer to your question, yes, I did so. I felt it would be easiest to get you away from D.Va this way.”  
  
“Why would you do that? Trying to get me unprotected, hmm?”  
  
“You have a sleep dart, as well as a grenade which could hurt me and heal yourself. Not to mention that you have a neural link to the others, via Kyubay, and are in no danger of finding yourself unable to contact them.” She transformed, and pulled up her chair, eyes level with Ana’s.  
  
“So! Is Kyubay hiding your contract, then? You needn’t have bothered: the others would not be shocked for too long.”  
  
“I take it you have disconnected from the neural link, then, in order for you to be able to talk to me about the possibility of hiding things from the team. Do not reconnect without forewarning, or I will tell the others what a witch is formed from.”  
  
“And what do I get, then, apart from not having your threat fulfilled?”  
  
“I’ll warn you of everything which could come to pass.”  
  
“You’re a time traveller, then? Risqué, although it does explain the tea. Thank you, by the way. It’s as if I made it myself! How many?”  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“How many times have you looped?”  
  
“Twice. This is my second attempt at fixing things.”  
  
“What’s gone wrong so far, then?”  
  
“Where I come from, Schatten only kills half the group. Mei dies in tomorrow’s attack-”  
  
“-Spoilers-”  
  
“-and Widowmaker, or Amélie, turns into a witch not long after that. She hasn’t told you what she wished for yet because of how it led to her husband’s death at her hands, and in the first timeline this gets her kicked out by you. Not long after her witch is destroyed, Mercy kills-”  
  
“Enough. What happened in the second timeline?”  
  
“When Mei finds out what a witch is, she will kill everyone to avoid anyone else becoming a witch.”  
  
“How long will that take?”  
  
“We have a week or two, depending on when Kyubay tries to get someone to witch to make it easier to ensure a chain witch reaction during the fight with Schatten.”  
  
“And what’s your plan?”  
  
“To save Mei, hopefully preventing Zarya from witching.”  
  
* * *  
  
“Why didn’t you save her?”  
  
“Zarya, please! Calm down! You cannot react like this! She didn’t let us into the heart of the labyrinth – how could I save her though an ice wall!” Widowmaker’s blue skin had a pink flush to it, heart beating faster as the weightlifter got closer.  
  
“You could have tried! She’s dead! And you-” She spat at Symmetra “-why didn’t you warn us! If you knew she was going to die, why wouldn’t you tell us? Do you just hate us?”  
  
“Of course not!”  
  
“Then is this something you do to someone you care about?”  
  
“I didn’t know how you would react, to knowing that I was from a failed attempt. I... I was scared, Zarya! Please, forgive me!”  
  
“But you could have saved her! Could have saved her could have saved her could have saved her couldhavesavedhercouldhavesavedhercouldhavesavedhercouldhavesavehercouldhavesavedher” The markers on her body, normally shining to indicate her charge, now filled steadily with black. “couldhavesavedhercould” Ana met eyes with Symmetra, and nodded. “havesavedhercouldhave” Symmetra stepped away from the group, and stepped through the teleporter. Zarya’s gem cracked, and Symmetra heard the group’s gasp, and could almost hear the moment, after they put Zarya to rest, where Mercy shot all of them.  
  
* * *  
  
“So, does that make me the only new gal who hasn’t already contracted? Blimey, you two haven’t wasted any time, have you?”  
  
Symmetra had caught Widowmaker as she arrived, and made up a lie about how she could sense new contracts really well. It worked, and so they had explained to everyone when they arrived that they were magical girls. They hadn’t told them their wishes, and no one was pressuring them to. Symmetra took Ana aside again.  
  
“It’s as if I made it myself! How many?”  
  
“Three.”  
  
“And what’s your plan this time?”  
  
“What I have already done should prevent any witches, as well as Mei’s death tomorrow. The furthest I have already managed is in two weeks, when Kyuubay tells everyone what a witch is, when Mei kills everyone. The solution may be to simply not leave her alone with anyone until the following day – we’ll see.”  
  
* * *  
  
“I will protect the innocent. Even if it means sacrificing my life, or the lives of those I care about. I will protect the innocent from witches – that is what I have sworn, and that is what I will do. So it is with great regret that I-”  
  
Ana hit her daughter with a sleep dart. “Fareeha, darling. We can’t have you ruining the carpet with scorch-marks just because we could all one day become that which we fight.”  
  
* * *  
  
Pharah lost her vigour for justice. Mercy lost her desire to fight. Symmetra caught Mei freezing her arm, to see if she could feel anything. D.Va deleted her twitter account, which made her name jump to number one again. Zarya started to use her bubble less on herself, and more on others. Widowmaker went from a pale blue to a pallid blue, and the bags under Tracer’s eyes doubled.  
  
But they had survived.  
  
* * *  
  
“She arrives tomorrow. You know that, correct?”  
  
Ana looked up from her chamomile. “Yes. What happened last time, then?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Symmetra admitted “You were all alive when I saw you, but I had locked myself in my room by that point. I was cowardly; I would even go so far as to say I was the very worst of friends.”  
  
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’ve lived through this twice already – that makes you a good friend in my eyes. At any rate, it will probably be easiest to confront Schatten as a group, so if we all meet here tomorrow?”  
  
Symmetra nodded her accord. The meeting was short, but essentially Ana lied about a plan she had that would become clear when they fought. Symmetra had to stifle a snort at that. But they all departed for their bedrooms, and she was left alone.  
  
Again.  
  
* * *  
  
Symmetra got up the following morning, only to find their bodies. She stared at Ana’s lifeless corpse, met its eyes. They were empty, and it took some willpower to stop her crying. But she managed it, even when she saw Widowmaker and Tracer’s bodies curled together, when she saw the way that Mercy’s body was crumpled protectively over Pharah’s, how Mei and Zarya faced away from each other and into the corners of the room. D.Va did none of these dramatic poses for she died in her bed; peacefully, as far as Symmetra could tell.  
  
She looked at the cloud of shadow which was giggling behind her, and stepped through the teleporter.  
  
* * *  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Five.”  
  
“What’s your plan?”  
  
“I have everyone alive up until Schatten’s arrival, so she’s the only obstacle left. Our first fight with the whole team, she simply killed us overnight when we slept separately, so we will have to stay up the night before to beat her. This worked last time; we actually had a battle, which as far as I can tell hasn’t happened before. However, we lost, because we had no coherent plan. Can you help with one, then?”  
  
* * *  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Ten.”  
  
“What’s your plan?”  
  
She chuckled. “You say the same thing every time, you know? At any rate, help me review the footage from the last few fights, to come up with a plan.”  
  
* * *  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Twenty.”  
  
“You must be quite tired of this by now.”  
  
“I am. One time, I just lived out my old life. It was quite distressing.”  
  
“I can imagine. How do you stay so youthful?”  
  
“I take on the body of my doppelganger each time I arrive, as far as I can tell. The creature said that they just died, but I think it knew I would find it more disturbing to know I was directly – not indirectly – replacing them. It also, presumably, knew I would come to this conclusion at some point, and so lied to me in order to maximise my distress.”  
  
“It’s only going to get worse from here. You know that, don’t you?”  
  
“I think so, yes.”  
  
“So, what’s your plan?”  
  
“This time? This time, I think the flaw lay here…”  
  
* * *  
  
“Your calculations were wrong.”  
  
Symmetra met with lCyubey on the roof. It swished its tail, and met her with its eyes. For whatever reason, they were a dark green – not its trademark pale pink – here, although Symmetra didn’t care at this point.  
  
“I’ve run this same month over a hundred times now. Schatten is impossible to defeat.”  
  
“My calculations weren’t wrong. I voted against allowing her to contract like that, and this is precisely why. I knew there was no way a witch of that power could be defeated.”  
  
Symmetra looked at the black mass that had spread across the city. “What do I do, then? Since I can’t fulfil what I have wished for, what is my purpose?”  
  
“You should find a new one. Following this path won’t help you. Why not change the parameters on your teleporter to help you find a version of yourself who never contracted, and take her place? You could always find the others on that world, and live out your lives.”  
  
“That wouldn’t fix anything. There would just be new problems to deal with, but I wouldn’t be able to fix them with magic anymore.”  
  
“How did you cope, then? Before magic?”  
  
“I don’t think I can remember anymore.”  
  
“Try to. At any rate, my job is fulfilled. There’s no way off of this planet, apart from your teleporter, so I wish you the best of luck.” It locked eyes with her again. “We’ve seen plenty of people in a situation like yours. It is possible.”  
  
“What is?”  
  
“Whatever you want. It could take you thousands, or millions of tries, but this universe is so large it is impossible to never find a world where it worked. Some people do that. Others, typically those in situations like yours where the chance is so low they give up, tend to find a new timeline and live there. Find a spark of hope in you, because for you, anything is possible. Remember that.”  
  
It was about to step of the roof, when it turned to her for the final time.  
  
“I’d suggest talking to Ana about the inverse of a witch, if you wanted to try again.”  
  
Symmetra stood there, on the roof, for a very long time. Some versions of herself stood there until the mist ate away at her as if it was acid, and others followed lCyubey’s advice, and avoided the search in order to settle for a comfortable life.  
  
Even in a universe so impossibly large that it held every single variation of itself, this was the only known case where Symmetra didn’t do either of these things.  
  
* * *  
  
“How many?”  
  
“I’ve stopped caring.”  
  
“What’s your plan?”  
  
“I was told to talk to you about ‘the inverse of a witch’ by one of those things.”  
  
Ana looked up in shock. “The inverse of a witch? I would imagine it meant a magical girl, but then again, you’ve exhausted that pathway.”  
  
“lCyubey could have meant something which Lena Oxton has shown the ability to do in the past.” lCyuubey had entered the room silently, and now curled up on Symmetra’s lap. “In the world you come from, Symmetra, Widowmaker’s witch was defeated via Tracer releasing a larch amount of energy in a short period of time. The number of people to exhibit this behaviour is lower still than the number of people who can harness energy to create items like D.Va’s bomb, or your teleporter, but all members of the group have shown this ability at some point, in some timeline.”  
  
“How do we access it, then?”  
  
“A witch releases the stored up negative energy of the magical girl. Some refer to its inverse – which releases all the stored positive energy of the magical girl – as that of a ‘Princess’, in that it is the opposite to a witch in every regard and is the most powerful of all kinds of magical girls, making it what could be considered their leader. Princess also fits the fairytale motif the rest of the names have. At any rate, a princess is accessed by building positive energy in these magical girls. Adrenaline, typically accessed through a fight, makes the transformation more likely.”  
  
“Then I suppose we had best be kinder to each other.”  
  
* * *  
  
Schatten had arrived. She was monstrous, made of melting shadow, but the group was ready for her.  
  
Symmetra threw shields as Zarya bubbled herself and Mei, as the mist sharpened into knives and rained down from above. Cackling was constantly heard, clips of others laughs put together to make an inhuman laugh that echoed impossibly. Pharah fired rockets endlessly into the mist, and Tracer kept the majority of it distracted. She ran through the mist, focusing her fire on any part which seemed even slightly to be solid. Whenever she did, it would dissolve and the mist would instead try to catch her through ropes of shadow, at which point she recalled.  
  
Mercy constantly revived soul gems, abusing her healing magic and keeping everyone protected when Mei or Symmetra were slow to block the current barrage. Zarya and D.Va had the benefit of Ana’s concentrated fire, their bodies augmented by magic to take the most damage, best healed by Ana’s sharp bursts as opposed to Mercy’s sustain.  
  
But nothing was of any consequence to Schatten. She simply shrugged off whatever they put out, as it became harder still to defend against her attacks. Symmetra felt herself filling with despair, fearful that this would end as every other attempt had. And then Ana came to her. She held her, tightly, in her arms as she spoke into her ear.  
  
“Symmetra! You cannot give up now! You have been travelling for years to find this timeline, this attempt which might work, and because it starts badly, you give in? You should know by now how everything you’ve done has been incredible, and I don’t know if anyone apart from you could have done it. You have been so strong, so much stronger than anyone else has ever had to be before. You’ve done incredible things, all in the name of this team, all in the name of us. You can’t give up because it starts badly. I don’t even think you, who has travelled for decades to find us and lost yourself in the process, can give up anymore. Because I won’t let you. I won’t let you lose. I’m going to carry you through this, and then you’re going to find a purpose again. You’re going to live, Symmetra, because if someone as strong as you can’t, who can?”  
  
And Symmetra felt the despair in her become blown away as she found hope again. She thought of Tracer, and how nothing had ever daunted her, even the loss of Widowmaker. She thought of Widowmaker, and how even if she couldn’t agree with her, she fought harder than anyone else for what she thought was right. She thought of D.Va, her childish attempts to cheer up the team always working because of how her energy was near limitless. She thought of Zarya, who had a heart for those she loved which was the size of the world. She thought of Pharah, and how she had the strongest sense of justice on the team, her conscience enough to speak for them all. She thought of Mercy’s tenacity and her will which had carried her for so long when she had done all she had which was wrong. She thought of Mei, and how lonely she must have felt before joining Overwatch, and how finding out about witches had killed her because, for the first time since she woke up, she had felt she belonged again. And she thought of Ana and how she had protected this team and so many others for so many years, but never let anything stop her from loving them all.  
  
She felt the love she had for each and every one of them explode from within her, and cut the shadows of Schatten.  
  
She spoke to the others, then. About Pharah and her justice, Zarya and her heart, Ana and protection. One by one, the group’s emotions for each other – trust, respect, love – exploded, and they found themselves destroying Schatten.  
  
Symmetra felt herself smile for the first time since she contracted, and screamed with joy, as the witch who had been the bane of her existence for so long was destroyed.  
  
* * *  
  
lCyuubey finished its report to the hive mind. The group had released enough energy to fulfil the quota for that galaxy, and then again enough for eight galaxies more. The effect on the universe as a whole was negligible, but the impact of it was that it was deemed enough to free them all from the confines of being magical girls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing my first fic has really been amazing. Thank you all for reading. I'll start work on my next fic in the new year; I'm yet to decide on a posting schedule, but whilst I may start writing then, I'll probably wait till half the fic is written before I post. This will make posting more manageable for me, and the chapters will probably be better written if I can afford to take longer on them and edit them more.
> 
> This last chapter changed a lot. At first it was going to end with everyone doing what they did at the end, but then I played with Symmetra just giving up and then dying. Then I went back again to this, which might be the weaker ending of the two but certainly feels a lot better.
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed Schatten! Leave any comments you might still have below, although I think begging for them in my last post would be a bit much. 
> 
> You can find me on my tumblr, which is in my profile.


End file.
